Annals  of  the  Association  of  American  Geographers 
Volume  V,  pp.  27-59 


The  Barrier  Boundary  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean Basin  and  Its  Northern 
Breaches  as  Factors  in  History 


By 
ELLEN  CHURCHILL  SEMPLE 


Published  by 
THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  AMERICAN  GEOGRAPHERS 


ANNALS  OF  THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  AMERICAN  GEOGRAPHERS 
Volume  V,  pp.  27-59 


THE  BARRIER  BOUNDARY  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

BASIN  AND  ITS  NORTHERN  BREACHES 

AS  FACTORS  IN  HISTORY 

ELLEN  CHURCHILL  SEMPLE 

CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction 27 

The  Bosporus-Hellespont  Breach 28 

The  Balkan  Barriers  and  the  Morava-Vardar  Furrow 29 

Passes  of  the  Julian  Alps  and  the  Karst 31 

The  Rhone  Valley  Breach 46 

INTRODUCTION. — The  Mediterranean  occupies  the  subsidence  areas  in  the 
broad  belt  of  young,  folded  mountains  which  cross  Southern  Europe  and  the 
neighboring  parts  of  Africa  and  Asia.  Moreover,  it  lies  on  the  northern 
margin  of  the  trade- wind  tract.  These  two  features  of  its  geographical 
location  are  of  immense  import.  They  have  given  to  the  Mediterranean 
Basin  the  isolating  boundaries  of  mountains  and  deserts.  They  have  made 
it  in  a  peculiar  sense  an  inclosed  sea.  It  is  inclosed,  not  only  by  the  land, 
but  by  barrier  forms  of  the  land.  Rarely  are  the  barriers  single,  more- 
over. Range  succeeds  range  to  a  snow-capped  climax  of  the  land :  beyond 
mountain  system  or  precipitous  escarpment  lies  semi-arid  waste,  far- 
stretching  desert,  or  rugged  plateau. 

These  barrier  boundaries  long  exercised  a  dominant  influence  upon 
Mediterranean  history.  For  ages  they  confined  that  history  within  the 
narrow  limits  of  the  basin,  except  where  a  few  natural  openings  offered 
pathways  to  regions  of  contrasted  climate  and  production  beyond.  These 
breaches  in  the  barrier  were  varied  in  their  geographical  character — a 
river  road  like  the  Nile  across  the  desert,  a  strait  like  Gibraltar,  an  isthmus 
like  Suez,  a  long  intermontane  trough  like  the  Rhone  Valley,  or  a  saddle  in 
the  encircling  mountains  like  the  Peartree  Pass  and  the  low  Karst  Plateau. 
But  all  have  focused  upon  themselves  the  historical  events  of  wide  areas. 
They  have  crowded  into  their  narrow  channels  streams  of  trade,  migration, 
colonization,  and  conquest;  they  have  drawn  these  from  remote  sources 
and  directed  them  to  equally  remote  destinations.  They  have  played  this 
role  of  the  guiding  hand  of  Providence  from  the  dawn  of  history  to  the 
World  War  of  1915. 

The  Mediterranean  is  inclosed  on  the  north  by  a  mountain  rampart, 
measuring  2,330  miles  in  a  straight  line  from  the  folded  ranges  behind 
Gibraltar  to  the  massive  Taurus  System,  where  it  looms  above  the  Bay  of 
Alexandretta.  The  huge  oblong  of  the  Anatolian  Plateau,  lying  at  an 

27 


28  E.    C.    8EMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN    BOUNDARIES   IN    HISTORY 

average  elevation  of  3,000  to  4,000  feet  (1,000  to  1,200  meters),  bordered 
north  and  south  by  yet  higher  ranges  rising  abruptly  from  the  sea,  and 
edged  by  a  rugged,  inhospitable  coast,  lends  to  the  Asia  Minor  Peninsula 
the  character  of  a  triple  barrier  confining  the  Levantine  Basin  of  the 
Mediterranean  on  the  north  for  a  distance  of  560  miles  (900  kilometers). 
Its  rigid  billows  of  land,  mounting  higher  and  higher  from  west  to  east, 
merge  into  other  highlands  extending  far  into  Asia.  Any  attempt, 
therefore,  to  round  them  on  the  east  involves  a  toilsome  journey  over  the 
ranges  of  Armenia,  whose  valley  floors  to  be  traversed  lie  nearly  6,000  feet 
(1,800  meters)  above  sea-level. 

THE  BOSPORUS-HELLESPONT  BREACH. — On  the  west,  this  barrier 
peninsula  sinks  beneath  the  ^Egean  Sea;  but  its  folded  ranges,  lifting 
their  peaks  above  the  waves  as  rocky  islands,  soon  emerge  again  in  the 
broad,  corrugated  highlands  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula.  The  blunt  north- 
west corner  of  Asia  Minor  dips  so  slightly  that  the  Bosporus  and  Hellespont 
make  only  a  wet  scratch  across  its  surface.  But  that  scratch  is  enough. 
It  forms  a  clear  breach  in  the  inclosing  mountain  wall.  Through  it  the 
Mediterranean  penetrates  into  the  Euxine  Basin,  but  only  to  face  other 
mountain  obstructions  encircling  this  great  marine  alcove  on  all  but  its 
northwest  coast.  The  extensive  subsidence  between  the  lower  Danube 
plain  and  the  Crimea  breaks  the  continuity  of  the  folded  barrier  between 
the  Balkans  and  the  Caucasus  System.  The  Caucasus,  also,  is  nipped  in 
two  by  the  Kertch  Strait,  which  severs  the  Yaila  Mountains  of  the  Crimea 
from  the  parent  range,  and  admits  the  Euxine  waters  into  the  Sea  of 
Azof.  This  local  depression  is  a  companion  piece  to  the  Gulf  of  Odessa. 
Only  in  these  two  inlets  of  shallow  water  does  the  Mediterranean  pene- 
trate beyond  its  normal  mountain  boundaries  into  the  low,  accessible 
plains  of  Eastern  Europe. 

Where  the  north  wall  opens  its  gates  at  the  Bosporus  and  Hellespont, 
the  Mediterranean  reached  out  and  drew  these  coastal  plains  of  Russia 
into  its  field  of  history  from  the  seventh  century  before  Christ  till  the 
control  of  the  Straits  passed  to  the  intruding  Turks  in  1453.  The  ele- 
ments of  this  history  were  in  general  peaceful :  commerce  and  colonization. 
Greek  trading-stations  and  colonies  at  an  early  date  began  to  line  the 
Pontic  shores,1  and  to  send  out  lumber  from  the  well-forested  Caucasus, 
summer  wheat  from  the  Crimean  plains,  hides  from  steppe  pastures,  and 
fish  from  the  tunny  spawning-grounds.2  Ancient  Athens,  poor  in  plow- 
land,  came  to  depend  chiefly  upon  Pontic  wheat  to  supply  her  market,8 
and  the  Scythian  tribes  of  the  Dnieper  grassland  came  equally  to  depend 
upon  Greek  wine  as  the  luxury  of  their  meager  fare.  These  are  the  chief 

>Bury,  J.  B.:   History  of  Greece  (New  York,  1909),  90-93. 

*  Strabo  xi.  2,  4. 

•Herodotus  iv.  17;  vii.  147.  Demosthenes  De  Corona  par.  73,  87.  Wiskermann,  H.: 
Die  Antike  Landwirtschaft  Preischrift  (Leipzig,  1859),  14-20.  Xenophon  Hellenes  v.  4.  61. 
Diodorus  Siculus  xv.  34.  Bury,  J.  B.:  op.  cit.,  196,  379,  615,  616.  Curtius,  Ernst:  History  of 
Greece  (tr.  by  A.  W.  Ward,  New  York,  1899),  V,  Book  VII,  137. 


THE  BALKAN  BARRIERS  AND  THE  MORAVA-VARDAR  FURROW     29 

exchanges  today  between  the  two  localities.  With  every  threat  of  inter- 
ruption to  communication  through  the  Bosporus  and  Hellespont  the  price 
of  wheat  went  up  in  Attica  and  Miletus,  till  finally  Athens  drew  all  the 
coastal  fringe  of  Pontic  cities  and  the  Straits  themselves  into  her  maritime 
empire,  and  guaranteed  the  security  of  her  grain  trade  by  an  unrivaled 
navy.1 

By  reason  of  this  marine  breach  in  the  mountain  barrier  the  Greeks 
were  able  to  weave  a  border  of  Hellenic  blood  and  culture  upon  those 
northern  Euxine  shores.  Owing  to  the  successive  streams  of  nomad 
hordes  from  Western  Asia  which  flooded  the  adjoining  plains,  however, 
Mediterranean  civilization  left  there  no  permanent  impress.  Nevertheless, 
Russian  traders  and  marauders  from  northern  Slav  principalities  like  Kiev, 
Smolensk,  and  commercial  Novgorod,  took  the  Dnieper  River  route  to  the 
Black  Sea  and  Constantinople  in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries,  and  carried 
away  the  elements  of  Byzantine  art  and  religion  to  the  untutored  north. 

THE  BALKAN  BARRIERS  AND  THE  MORAVA-VARDAR  FURROW. — West 
of  the  Bosporus  and  Hellespont  the  border  barriers  of  the  Mediterranean 
reappear,  faintly  at  first,  as  the  worn-down  hill  country  of  eastern  Thrace. 
This  affords  an  easy  land  road  through  the  Maritza  Valley  between  the 
^Egean  and  the  Black  Sea,  and  thus  reinforces  the  marine  communication 
through  the  near-by  straits.  The  Thracian  hills,  however,  soon  rise  and 
merge  into  the  broad,  compound  barrier  formed  by  the  steep  Balkan  folds 
and  the  ancient  crystalline  mass  of  the  Thraco-Macedonian  Highlands. 
This  old  dissected  mountain  region,  rising  to  heights  of  9,000  feet  or  more 
in  the  Rhodope  and  Perim  ranges,  but  sinking  elsewhere  to  broad,  undulat- 
ing uplands  and  deep  river  valleys,  serves  to  cement  the  young  Balkan 
System  to  the  multiple  ranges  of  the  Dinaric  Alps.  These  run  north  and 
south  through  the  western  part  of  the  Peninsula,  from  the  head  of  the 
Adriatic  to  the  rocky  headlands  of  the  Peloponnesus,  in  a  forbidding  suc- 
cession of  bold  limestone  ridges,  which  rise  to  jagged  crests  6,500  feet 
(2,000  meters)  above  the  sea.  Communication  between  the  Adriatic  coast 
and  the  interior  is  excessively  difficult.  No  thoroughfare  is  offered  by  the 
rivers  Narenta  and  Drin,  which  break  through  the  ranges  in  wild,  impass- 
able gorges.  Travel  across  the  country  is  a  succession  of  ups  and  downs 
over  gray,  stony  ridges  and  gray,  barren  valleys,  for  rarely  does  a  saddle 
nick  the  high  sky-line  of  the  chains.  Width,  height,  and  lack  of  passes 
make  the  Dinaric  System  maintain  in  a  pre-eminent  degree  the  barrier 
nature  of  mountains.2 

In  all  the  700-mile  stretch  of  mountains  between  the  Maritza  Valley 
and  the  Gulf  of  Trieste  there  is  no  real  breach,  but  only  a  few  passes  which 
are  approached  by  long,  often  devious,  routes  across  the  highlands.  The 
Morava  and  Vardar  rivers,  the  one  flowing  north  and  the  other  south 


1  Bury,  J.  B.:  op.  cit.,  365,  380-81. 

2  Based  upon  personal  observation  during  a  motor  trip    through    Dalmatia,  Bosnia, 
Herzegovina,  and  Montenegro  in  1912. 


30  E.   C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

from  a  low  watershed  (460  meters  or  1,508  feet)  in  the  heart  of  the  Penin- 
sula, together  cut  a  valley  furrow  of  gentle  slopes  across  the  mountains  from 
the  Danube  near  Belgrade  to  the  northwest  corner  of  the  ^Egean  Sea. 
This  furrow  has  from  ancient  times  determined  the  north-and-south  line 
of  communication.  The  land  route  which  it  opens  is  easy  but  long,  because 
it  crosses  a  mountain  mass  over  300  miles  wide.  Moreover,  travel 
on  it  is  not  assisted  by  river  transportation.  The  Vardar,  choked 
by  sand  in  its  passage  across  its  swampy,  deltaic  plain  to  the  Gulf  of 
Salonica,  and  broken  by  rapids  in  its  upper  course,  affords  no  water-way 
to  the  interior,  while  the  Morava  is  navigable  for  only  seventy  miles 
from  the  Danube.1 

The  mountains  about  the  head  of  the  Vardar,  inhabited  by  robber 
tribes  from  remote  times,  served  to  discourage  Macedonia's  expansion 
northward,  even  under  Philip  and  Alexander  the  Great.  Roman  dominion 
did  not  overstep  this  barrier  till  29  B.C.,  or  a  hundred  and  fifteen  years 
after  the  conquest  of  Macedonia,  when  the  Morava  Valley,  under  the  title 
of  Upper  Moesia,  was  embodied  in  the  Empire.  Even  then  the  mountain 
watershed  remained  the  provincial  boundary,  and  was  never  crossed 
by  a  Roman  road  between  the  two  valleys. 

The  great  Roman  highway  of  the  Peninsula  ran  between  the  capital 
at  Constantinople  and  the  middle  Danubian  frontier — between  the  military 
center  and  the  exposed  border.  It  left  the  Morava  Valley  at  Naissus 
(modern  Nish)  and  followed  a  diagonal  furrow  across  the  high  valleys 
between  the  Balkan  and  Anti-Balkan  mountains  through  Serdica  (Sofia), 
and  then  by  the  Trajan  Pass  (843  meters,  or  2,765  feet)  reached  the  upper 
Maritza  Valley.  Thence  it  led  past  Philippopolis  and  Adrianople  to 
Constantinople.  This  route  took  a  long  and  devious  course  to  avoid 
the  great  highland  mass  of  the  Peninsula,  and  thereby  became  the  historic 
highway  from  Central  Europe  to  the  Byzantine  bridge  and  Asia  Minor; 
it  was  essentially  a  land  route  from  west  to  east,  rather  than  a  transit 
route  across  the  mountains  from  north  to  south. 

This  r61e  fell  to  the  Morava- Vardar  groove,  and  was  a  later  develop- 
ment so  far  as  historical  record  goes;  but  doubtless  it  played  its  part  in 
the  prehistoric  drift  of  the  Greek  peoples  from  the  northwest  southward 
into  Macedonia,  Thessaly,  and  Hellas.  This  was  the  route  traversed 
by  the  Ostrogoths  in  473  A.D.  in  their  invasion  of  Northern  Greece.2 
It  was  the  line  of  expansion  of  the  Servian  kingdom  under  the  great 
Stephan  Dusan  (1336-56),  whose  inland  domain  needed  an  outlet  on  the 
.<Egean;3  and  also  the  line  of  expansion  with  the  same  objective  in 
the  Gulf  of  Salonica,  that  was  the  aim  of  Servia  in  the  Balkan  War 
of  1912. 


>  Hogarth,  D.  G.:   The  Nearer  East  (London,  1905),  23,  24,  238. 

» Hodgkin,  Thomas:   Italy  and  Her  Invaders  (Oxford,  1880),  III,  Book  IV,  note,  p.  31 
and  map,  p.  32. 

•  Miller,  William:   The  Balkans  (New  York,  1907),  273. 


PASSES  OF  THE  JULIAN  ALPS  AND  THE  KARST  31 

Servia's  location  in  the  Morava  Basin  has  made  it  custodian  of  these 
main  routes  south  and  east  across  the  Balkan  Peninsula.  It  blocks  the 
path  between  east  and  west.  For  this  reason  the  Turkish  sultans  of  the 
fifteenth  century  saw  that  they  must  first  occupy  Servia,  if  they  were  to 
realize  their  purpose  of  conquering  the  rich  fields  of  Hungary;  and  Hungary 
rushed  to  the  support  of  Servia  when  the  Turkish  onslaught  came,  in  order 
to  guard  the  avenue  leading  to  its  own  frontier.  The  Turks  secured  the 
control  of  Servia.  They  found  its  thoroughfare  so  necessary  to  them 
in  their  long  wars  with  Hungary,  that  they  kept  a  tighter  grip  upon  Servia 
than  upon  Moldavia  and  Wallachia,  and  immediately  upon  its  conquest 
in  1459  made  it  an  integral  part  of  their  empire.1 

From  the  early  eighteenth  century,  when  the  Turks  began  their  slow 
recessional  in  the  Balkan  Peninsula  and  the  Austrian  power  its  advance, 
the  country  holding  the  Morava  highway  was  again  the  bone  of  contention. 
Between  1718  and  1739  Austria  drove  a  wedge  of  occupation  up  the 
Morava  Basin  nearly  to  Nish.  From  the  tune  of  Emperor  Joseph  II 
(d.  1790)  the  domination  of  Servia  has  been  a  fundamental  principle  of 
Austrian  statesmanship.  The  object  has  been  twofold:  to  guard  this 
open  highway  which  gives  access  to  the  middle  Danube  from  two  directions; 
and  to  gain  for  the  vast  inland  empire  of  Austro-Hungary  an  outlet  to 
the  ^Egean  and  to  the  Bosporus,  the  sea  breach  in  the  mountain  barrier 
which  commands  both  the  Black  Sea  trade  and  the  land  route  through 
Asia  Minor  to  the  east. 

Russia,  also,  since  it  secured  its  first  Black  Sea  littoral  in  1783,  has 
made  the  Bosporus  the  objective  of  its  expansion.  It  needs  an  outlet  to 
the  Mediterranean  that  cannot  be  jeopardized.  During  the  closure  of 
the  Dardanelles  against  Italian  aggression  in  the  spring  of  1912,  Greek, 
Norwegian,  and  British  grain  ships  were  penned  up  in  the  harbor  of 
Odessa,  while  European  cities  clamored  for  Russian  wheat.  More  ominous 
for  the  fate  of  Russia  in  the  present  conflict  is  the  exclusion  of  munitions 
from  the  Black  Sea  ports,  and  her  inability  to  market  the  wheat  which 
would  re-establish  her  national  credit.  Her  present  necessity  furnishes 
the  strongest  argument  for  final  perseverance  in  her  aim. 

PASSES  OF  THE  JULIAN  ALPS  AND  THE  KARST. — Austria's  need  for  a 
southern  outlet  is  not  so  urgent.  She  commands  another  breach  in  the 
barrier  boundary  of  the  Mediterranean.  Near  her  Italian  frontier  at 
the  head  of  the  Adriatic,  the  broad  and  corrugated  highlands  bordering 
the  western  side  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula  contract  and  dip  as  they  merge 
into  the  Karst  Plateau  and  the  Julian  Alps.  Farther  north  again  towers 
the  mighty  system  of  the  Alps,  rising  range  beyond  range,  up  to  the  high, 
white  levels  of  eternal  snow.  The  Julian  Alps  are  a  slender  southeastern 
offshoot  of  the  main  system.  They  attain  in  the  north  an  altitude  of  9,394 
feet  (2,864  meters)  in  the  three-cornered  peak  of  Terglon,  but  from  this  they 
shelve  off  southward  into  a  rugged  limestone  platform  of  low  altitude. 

>  Miller,  William:  The  Balkans,  293. 


32  E.   C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

Presenting  toward  the  west  a  steep  and  forbidding  escarpment,  crossed 
by  narrow  ridges,  pock-marked  by  numerous  funnel-shaped  cavities,  and 
guiltless  of  visible  drainage  streams,  this  Karst  Plateau  extends  along  the 
base  of  the  Istrian  Peninsula  as  far  as  the  Gulf  of  Fiume  and  the  eastward- 
flowing  Kulpa  River.  It  merges  beyond  into  the  high,  folded  ranges  of 
the  Great  Capella  Mountains,  which  effectively  cut  off  their  hinterland 
from  the  sea. 

Northeast  of  the  Adriatic,  therefore,  for  a  stretch  of  46  miles  (75 
kilometers),  the  mountain  barrier  of  the  Mediterranean  Basin  is  partially 
breached.  At  one  point  it  narrows  to  the  width  of  30  miles  (50  kilo- 
meters) between  the  low  Venetian  plains  and  the  deep  re-entrant  valley  of 
erosion  cut  back  into  the  highland  mass  by  the  upper  Save  River  and  its 
headstreams.  Moreover,  at  this  narrowest  point  the  barrier  sinks  to  the 
level  of  2,897  feet  in  a  limestone  plateau  known  to  the  ancients  as  the 
Mons  Ocra,  and  to  moderns  as  the  Peartree  Range.  Two  rivers,  the 
Frigidus  or  Wipbach  on  the  western  slope,  and  the  Laibach  on  the  eastern, 
issue  from  limestone  caverns,  after  the  manner  of  streams  in  the  Karst 
country,  and  carve  out  paths  down  the  opposite  sides  from  the  low  plateau 
above  to  the  plains  below.  Here,  therefore,  the  Alpine  barrier  et  largius 
patentem  et  planissimum  habet  ingressum,  says  the  historian  Paulus  (720- 
800  A.D.),  who  from  his  boyhood  had  known  this  broad  and  easy  entrance, 
and  had  seen  a  barbarian  horde  burst  through  it  as  through  an  open  door.1 

There  were  other  routes  across  the  mountain  saddle,  as  we  shall  see, 
but  this  was  the  best,  and  from  very  ancient  times  it  became  a  well- 
trodden  path.  Here  concentrated  the  traffic  of  a  far-reaching  hinterland. 
The  geographical  reasons  are  plain  enough.  The  Peartree  Pass  afforded 
the  shortest  and  lowest  transit  route  to  the  interior  in  the  whole  1,300-mile 
stretch  of  mountains  between  the  Bosporus  and  the  Rhone  Valley  breach. 
It  lay  between  two  natural  thoroughfares,  the  level  plains  of  Northern 
Italy  and  the  wide  plain  of  the  Danube,  which  cannot  be  separated  geo- 
graphically or  historically  from  the  nomad-breeding  steppes  of  Southern 
Russia.  The  Drave  and  Save  rivers,  tributaries  of  the  Danube,  drain  the 
longitudinal  valleys  of  the  eastern  Alps  and  open  avenues  of  easy  grade 
far  up  the  eastern  slope  of  the  dividing  range.  Moreover,  this  dip  in  the 
mountain  wall  was  located  between  the  head  of  the  Adriatic,  an  old  sea-lane 
of  maritime  enterprise,  and  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Laibach-Save- 
Danube  System.  For  the  little  Laibach  can  carry  a  barge  soon  after  it 
issues  from  its  cavern.  It  springs  full  grown  from  the  mountain's  womb, 
such  strength  has  it  gathered  in  its  underground  life,  fed  by  a  whole 
arterial  system  of  hidden  rivers. 

The  historical  importance  of  passes  increases  with  their  facility  of 
transit;  with  their  command  of  valley  thoroughfares  and  water  approaches, 
either  navigable  rivers  or  seas;  and  with  the  contrast  between  the  regions 
of  productions,  both  in  point  of  climate  and  of  industrial  development, 

'  Quoted  in  T.  Hodgkin,  op.  tit.,  V,  Book  VI,  note,  p.  160. 


HISTORICAL   IMPORTANCE   OF   PEARTREE   PASS  33 

which  such  passes  serve  to  unite  and  whose  trade  they  forward.1  All  four 
of  these  advantages  were  possessed  by  the  Peartree  Pass  in  a  high  degree. 
Its  claim  to  the  first  two  has  been  indicated.  Through  all  ancient  and 
mediaeval  times  it  connected  the  civilized  and  industrial  Mediterranean 
lands  with  a  vast  hinterland  of  barbarism,  with  shifting  tribes  of  nomadic 
herdsmen  and  semi-nomadic  agriculturalists.  It  facilitated  the  exchange 
of  artistic  manufactured  products  in  bronze,  pottery,  linen  and  woolen 
fabric  for  the  crudest  raw  materials  from  forest,  pasture,  and  mine. 

The  contrast  in  climate  is  almost  as  marked.  The  Julian  Alps  and 
Karst  Plateau  are  a  heat  divide.  On  their  slopes  the  warm,  temperate 
climate  of  the  Mediterranean  Basin  meets  the  cold  temperate  climate 
of  Central  Europe.  The  January  isotherm  of  0  degree  C.  (32  degrees  F.), 
which  marks  the  dividing  line,  nowhere  else  approaches  so  near  to  the 
Mediterranean  proper  as  here.  It  runs  through  Bremen,  Munich,  along 
the  watershed  of  the  Karst,  then  turns  southeast  into  the  heart  of  the 
Balkan  Peninsula.  A  similar  contrast  of  winter  temperatures  in  an  equally 
short  space  appears  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Caucasus  windshield,  along 
the  Black  Sea  littoral.  The  Peartree  Pass,  which  is  located  approximately 
on  the  forty-sixth  parallel  of  latitude,  looks  down  upon  the  olive  trees  and 
rice  fields  of  the  warm  Venetian  plains.  Here  Italy  revealed  her  fatal 
gift  of  beauty  to  the  barbarian  hordes  who  pushed  up  the  Danube  highroad 
to  the  half-open  gate  of  the  Hesperian  Garden. 

The  ancient  Mons  Ocra  route  left  the  Adriatic  at  Aquileia,  a  Roman 
river  port  located  four  miles  up  the  navigable  Aquilo,  accessible  to  the 
sea  but  somewhat  protected  from  the  chronic  piracy  of  the  Adriatic. 
Turning  eastward,  the  road  crossed  the  Sontius  (modern  Isonzo)  and  led 
up  the  fertile  valley  of  the  Frigidus  (Wipbach)  to  the  summit  of  the  Mons 
Ocra  plateau.  There  the  easiest  path  across  must  have  run  past  a  wild 
pear  tree,  whose  white  blossoms  made  a  conspicuous  landmark  against  the 
green  of  the  surrounding  forest  when  spring  reopened  traffic  on  the  road. 
At  any  rate,  the  Roman  roadmakers  called  the  station  at  the  summit  Ad 
Pirum.  This  name  survives  in  the  Peartree  Pass  and  the  Birnbaumer 
Wald,  the  German  name  of  the  old  Mons  Ocra  plateau.  From  the  summit 
(2,897  feet)  the  road  dropped  down  to  Nauportus  (modern  Ober-Laibach, 
at  970  feet)  on  the  Laibach  River,  where  navigation  began  on  the  Save- 
Danube  System.  Strabo  states  that  the  distance  between  Aquileia  and 
Nauportus  was  variously  estimated  from  350  to  500  stadia,  or  40  to  57 
miles.2 

The  Romans  knew  of  another  track  over  the  Mons  Ocra  Range,  leading 
up  from  Tergeste  (Trieste)  to  Lacus  Lugeum  (Lake  Zirknitz),  and  thence 
to  Nauportus.3  This  route  had  marked  disadvantages.  It  ascended  the 

iSemple,  E.  C.:   Influences  of  Geographic  Environment  (New  York,  1911),  546,  549. 

1  Strabo  iv.  6.  10;  vii.  5. 2.  For  the  modern  road  in  detail,  see  Krohn,  Walter:  Beitr&gezur 
Verkehrs-geographie  von  Krain  (Konigsberg,  1911),  61-62. 

'Mommsen:  History  of  Rome  (New  York,  1873),  III,  215.  For  the  modern  road,  see 
ibid.,  63.  Canstein,  P.  von:  Die  oestlichen  Alpen  (Berlin,  1837),  235-58. 


34  E.   C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

plateau  by  no  long  valley  of  approach  like  that  of  the  Frigidus,  but  mounted 
the  steep  escarpment  overhanging  the  Gulf  of  Trieste.  Though  it  may 
have  found  a  lower  gap  than  the  Peartree  Pass,  it  had  to  traverse  the  pla- 
teau at  its  greatest  width  and  therefore  to  cross  the  successive  hill  ranges 
that  corrugate  its  surface.  Moreover,  the  plateau  is  almost  devoid  of 
water,  which  everywhere  seeps  through  the  porous  limestone  to  some 
impervious  stratum  of  clay  or  sandstone.  None  remains  on  the  surface 
to  carve  out  a  river  valley  of  easy  travel  for  the  wayfarer.  Therefore  this 
route  seems  early  to  have  been  abandoned  in  favor  of  the  Peartree  Pass. 
Centuries  later  it  was  partially  revived  when  Aquileia  and  the  other  ports 
along  the  low  Venetian  coast  were  silted  up  by  the  deposits  of  muddy 
Alpine  torrents,  and  were  therefore  superseded  by  the  deep  mountain- 
rimmed  harbor  of  Trieste.  This  harbor  was  the  geographical  determinant 
which  made  the  modern  railroad  follow  the  plateau  route  and  grapple 
with  the  problem  of  mounting  its  bold  escarpment. 

This  second  Mons  Ocra  route  lacked  early  historical  importance  also 
because  it  did  not  debouch  upon  the  fertile  Venetian  plains.  It  was 
therefore  generally  neglected  by  invading  hordes  from  the  Danube,  whose 
objective  was  the  rich  cities  of  Cisalpine  Gaul.  The  barbarians  preferred 
as  alternatives  two  routes  to  the  north  of  the  Julian  Alps.  These  were 
approached  by  the  valley  highways  of  the  upper  Drave  and  Save  rivers, 
and  crossed  the  mountains  by  a  high  saddle  between  the  Julian  and 
Carnic  Alps.  The  eastern  starting-point  for  both  was  the  ancient  Santi- 
cum  (modern  Villach),  located  at  an  altitude  of  1,665  feet,  in  a  broad  and 
lake-strewn  basin  at  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Drave.  It  had  a  situa- 
tion similar  to  that  of  Nauportus.  From  this  point  one  track  led  south 
over  the  Col  di  Tarvis  and  the  difficult  Predil  Pass,  called  the  "  Thermopylae 
of  Carinthia"  (3,810  feet  or  1,162  meters),  to  the  head  of  the  Sontius 
Valley  (Isonzo),  which  opened  a  way  down  to  the  coast  near  Aquileia.1 
The  Predil  Pass  was  too  difficult  to  attract  a  military  road  in  ancient  times, 
though  it  was  the  route  of  the  invading  Lombards  in  568  A.D.  A  few 
miles  to  the  west  of  it,  through  the  Pontebba  or  Pontafel  Pass  (2,615  feet 
or  797  meters),  ran  the  other  route  from  the  Col  di  Tarvis,  which  connected 
on  the  Italian  slope  with  a  headstream  of  the  Tiliaventus  River  (Taglia- 
mento).  In  the  days  of  the  Empire  a  Roman  military  road  followed  this 
route  over  the  Alps,  and  connected  Aquileia  with  the  navigable  course  of 
the  Drave,2  but  for  the  trader  it  involved  a  long  detour  from  his  market. 

The  ancient  amber  route  from  the  Baltic,  one  of  the  earliest  trade 
routes  of  Europe,  doubtless  reached  the  Mediterranean  by  all  these  passes, 
especially  in  its  primitive  stages,  when  it  was  trying  all  the  paths  to  find 
the  easiest.  This  is  the  evolutionary  history  of  all  the  pioneer  roads.  The 
amber  route  started  from  the  famous  amber  fields  of  the  southeastern 


'For  modern  road,   see   Baedeker:   The  Eastern  Alps  (Leipzig,  1888),  441-42.     Krebe, 
Norbert:  L&nderkunde  der  oesterreichischen  Alpen  (Stuttgart,  1913),  401,  409. 
« Shepherd,  W.  R.:  Historical  Atltu  (New  York,  1911),  map,  p.  27. 


THE   ANCIENT   TRADE   IN   AMBER  35 

Baltic,  especially  those  of  the  Samland,  and  led  up  the  Vistula  or  Oder 
River  to  the  Moravian  Gate,  a  broad  geological  gap  between  the  Car- 
pathian and  Sudetes  mountains,  which  was  once  a  passage  of  the  Eocene 
Sea.  The  route  led  thence  down  the  March  River  to  the  Danube,  thence 
across  the  spreading  spurs  of  the  eastern  Alps  to  the  Save  Valley,  the 
shrunken  barrier  of  the  Julian  Alps,  and  the  Mons  Ocra  Pass.1  According 
to  Pliny,  amber  was  brought  by  the  Germans  to  Pannonia  (Carinthia  and 
Carniola),  and  purchased  from  them  by  the  Veneti  living  on  the  north 
Adriatic  coast.  He  mentions  the  amber  necklaces  worn  by  the  women  of 
this  region,  not  only  as  an  ornament,  but  as  a  protection  against  sore 
throat.2 

So  regularly  did  the  Baltic  amber  emerge  here  upon  the  horizon  of 
Mediterranean  commerce  that  the  myth  of  Phaeton's  sisters,  transformed 
into  poplar  trees  and  weeping  tears  that  turned  into  amber,  associated 
the  precious  commodity  with  the  mouth  of  the  Po  River,3  showing  that 
the  trade  must  have  reached  back  into  exceedingly  ancient  times.  Herod- 
otus reports  its  supposed  origin  at  the  mouth  of  a  stream  flowing  into  the 
northern  sea,4  the  Eridanus,  a  name  which  later  came  to  be  identified 
with  the  Po.  He  also  clearly  indicates  a  route  of  communication  from 
the  far  northern  land  of  the  Hyperboreans,  which  emerged  at  the  head 
of  the  Adriatic  and  passed  down  this  sea  to  Epirus.5  The  offerings  to 
Apollo's  shrine  at  Delos  which  he  describes  as  taking  this  long  journey 
were  probably  forwarded  down  the  Adriatic  by  the  trading  ships  of  Corcyra 
and  Epidamnus,  which  nearly  three  centuries  before  had  been  colonized 
by  Corinth  for  the  purpose  of  exploiting  the  commerce  of  this  basin.  The 
inland  trade  from  the  head  of  the  Adriatic  was  appropriated  at  an  early 
date  by  the  Etruscans,  and  pushed  with  an  assiduity  which  suggests  that 
besides  amber,  other  valuable  northern  products,  like  gold  and  tin  from 
mines  in  the  Archean  rocks  of  the  Bohemian  massif,  may  have  reached 
the  Mediterranean  by  the  Peartree  route. 

According  to  a  tradition  reported  by  Pliny,  the  Argonauts  sailed  up 
the  Danube  and  Save  to  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Laibach,  and  there 
built  a  settlement  which  they  called  Nauportus,  because  from  there  they 
carried  their  ship  "Argo"  across  the  mountains  on  men's  shoulders  to  the 
Adriatic.6  The  feat  is  not  impossible,  in  view  of  the  elevation  of  Nauportus 
(970  feet),  only  2,000  feet  below  the  pass;  the  probable  presence  here  of 
stalwart  mountain  packers,  such  as  are  found  in  all  pass  regions  of  the 
world;  the  desire  of  such  poverty-stricken  mountain  tribes  to  make  money 
by  this  service  and  by  levying  tolls  on  the  traffic  over  their  mountain 
trails;  and  especially  in  view  of  the  small  vessels  of  this  legendary  period. 

1  Mommsen:   op.  cit.,  I,  Book  I,  177,  196,  266. 

2  Pliny  Historia  Naturalis  xxxvi.  2.  11. 

'  Diodorus  Siculus  v.  22  (Paris,  1855).     Pliny  op.  tit.  Hi.  30. 

4  Herodotus  iii.  15. 

5  Herodotus  iv.  33.  •  Pliny  op.  til.  iii.  22. 


36  E.    C.    8EMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN    BOUNDARIES    IN    HISTORY 

The  Homeric  Greeks  had  boats  of  only  twenty  oars.  The  large  pente- 
conter  of  fifty  oars  hardly  came  into  use  before  the  eighth  century  B.C.,  and 
it  appears  in  the  later  Homeric  poems  as  a  masterpiece  of  sea-craft.1 
When  one  considers  that  the  Bolivian  Indian  carries  150  pounds  of  rubber 
over  the  Andean  watershed,2  and  that  the  tea-packer  of  Western  China 
shoulders  a  burden  of  300  pounds  for  the  arduous  ascent  of  the  Central 
Asiatic  Plateau,8  a  twenty-oared  boat  carried  on  "the  shoulders  of  men" 
across  the  Peartree  Pass  seems  an  easy  undertaking  for  a  group  of  mountain 
porters.  It  may  be  the  first  historical  mention  of  the  watershed  "  portage  " 
or  "carry,"  which  is  a  regular  feature  of  primitive  inland  navigation  the 
world  over.  The  portage  is  a  commonplace  of  the  Indian  canoe  routes  in 
the  Western  Hemisphere,  in  the  pioneer  exploration  and  fur  trade  of 
Canada,  the  United  States,  Russia,  and  Siberia.  Isthmian  portages  were 
familiar  to  the  Greeks  from  very  ancient  times  on  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth, 
in  Eastern  Crete,  and  probably  on  the  narrow  Dalmatian  islands.4 

In  the  case  of  Pliny's  story,  what  probably  happened  was  that  some 
enterprising  Greek  inland  traders  may  have  found  their  way  up  the 
Danube  to  the  Laibach,  made  their  "carry"  to  the  Isonzo  River  and 
Adriatic,  and  after  long  years  their  bold  exploit  was  embodied  into  the 
tradition  of  the  Argonautic  expedition.  Such  was  the  process  of  accretion 
by  which  the  Odyssey  grew.  The  use  of  this  portage  path  for  boats  may 
have  given  rise  to  the  persistent  impression  among  the  ancients  that  there 
was  river  connection  between  the  head  of  the  Adriatic  and  the  Danube.5 

Strabo  emphasizes  the  value  of  the  Mons  Ocra  route  for  forwarding 
military  supplies  to  the  Roman  armies  engaged  in  war  with  the  Dacians  on 
the  lower  Danube.  But  this  was  only  part  of  the  traffic.  Merchandise 
in  large  quantities  was  carried  by  wagon  from  Aquileia  to  Nauportus,  and 
thence  by  boat  to  Segestica  (Sisek),  an  important  distributing  point  at  the 
confluence  of  the  Save  and  Kulpa  rivers.  There  was  an  active  trade 
between  Italy  and  the  barbarians  of  the  upper  Danube.  The  exchanges 
were  the  usual  ones  between  two  regions  of  different  climates  and  con- 
trasted economic  development.  The  barbarians  sent  over  the  pass  cattle, 
hides,  slaves  captured  in  their  incessant  border  wars,  gold  from  the  Alpine 
mines,  resin,  pitch,  and  other  forest  products.  They  received  in  return  the 
oil  and  wine  of  Italy,  fine  fabrics  of  Mediterranean  make,  glass,  and  pot- 
tery.6 The  flourishing  emporium  for  all  this  trade  was  the  fortified  town 
of  Aquileia,  at  the  head  of  the  Adriatic. 

»  Bury,  J.  B.:  op.  cit.,  109. 

» Church,  Col.  George  E.:  "The  Acre  Territory  and  the  Caoutchouic  Region  of  South- 
western Amazonia,"  Geogr.  Journ.,  XXIII,  596-613. 

•  Hue,  M.:  Journey  through  the  Chinese  Empire  (New  York,  1871),  39-40. 
«Rudolphi,  Dr.  H.:    "  Trageplaetxe  und  Schleppwege  oder  Portagen,"  Deutsche  Rund- 
schau fur  Geographic,  XXXIV,  66. 

•  Pliny  op.  cit.  iii.  22.     Apoloniua   Rh.   iv.   283.     Strabo  iv.  4.   9.     Aristotle  Historia 
Animalia  viii.  13.     Supported  also  by  Hipparchus  and  Theopompus. 

•  Strabo  iv.  6.  9.  12;  v.  1.  8;  vii.  5.  2. 


THE    JULIAN   ALPS   IN   ROMAN   STRATEGY  37 

The  location  of  Aquileia  was  not  altogether  a  fortunate  one,  however. 
Here  on  the  eastern  land  frontier  of  Cisalpine  Gaul  lay  the  weak  spot  in  the 
Alpine  frontier  of  Italy.  Here,  therefore,  at  the  eastern  extremity  of  the 
big  province  lay  the  local  capital,  Aquileia,  in  a  position  of  opportunity, 
but  also  of  danger.  The  city  was  founded  in  181  B.C.,  soon  after  the  Roman 
conquest  of  the  region,  as  a  fortress  against  intrusive  Celtic  peoples,  who 
were  already  beginning  to  threaten  this  vulnerable  frontier.  Their  first 
detachment  came  in  186  B.C.,  quietly  enough,  though  they  could  muster 
12.000  fighting  men,  Livy  tells  us.1  They  were  bent  upon  peaceable 
settlement,  so  they  arrived  with  "all  their  property  which  they  had 
brought  with  them  or  driven  before  them."  The  road  which  they  took 
across  the  forested  mountains  was  previously  unknown  to  the  Romans, 
but  it  lay  at  the  very  head  of  the  Adriatic.2  They  emerged  from  this 
unknown  pass  upon  the  Venetian  plain,  and  set  to  work  building  their 
villages  in  the  vicinity  of  the  later  Aquileia.  But  they  were  ordered  out 
by  the  Roman  proconsul,  and  had  to  obey. 

The  Senate,  finding  the  Alps  in  this  region  not  the  "almost  impassable 
barrier"  that  they  had  supposed  them  to  be,  established  Aquileia  as  a 
Latin  colony  to  protect  the  border.  The  new  settlement  was  a  peculiarly 
remote  outpost  of  the  military  frontier.  The  nearest  Roman  colonies, 
which  marked  the  line  of  continuous  settlement  and  of  assured  civil 
government  in  the  young  province  of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  were  Bononia, 
Mutina,  Parma,  and  Placentia.  All  were  located  at  the  northern  foot  of 
the  Apennines  along  the  new  Via  ^Emilia,  and  all  had  been  built  within  the 
four  previous  decades.  Then  only  two  years  after  the  founding  of  Mutina, 
Aquileia  was  established  over  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  away,  an  ethnic 
island,  dropped  down  in  a  sea  of  Veneti  allies.  A  sudden  protrusion  of 
the  frontier  like  this  means  that  the  expansion  is  necessitated  by  danger  or 
suggested  by  opportunity.  The  situation  evidently  required  peculiar 
inducements,  for  the  3,000  militia  colonists  who  were  assigned  to  Aquileia 
received  extraordinary  allotments  of  land,  50  jugera,  or  32  acres,  to  every 
foot  soldier  and  150  jugera,  or  96  acres,  to  every  horseman.3  This  was 
eight  or  ten  times  the  usual  allowance. 

The  border  cantonment  was  established  none  too  soon.  In  179  B.C. 
came  another  Gallic  band  of  3,000,  pushing  across  the  Alps  and  asking 
for  land.  More  serious  seemed  the  threat  of  Philip  of  Macedon  to  lead 
a  horde  of  his  mountain  barbarians  into  Italy  by  this  convenient  northeast 
frontier.  So  the  Romans,  preparing  for  all  emergencies,  conquered  the 
Peninsula  of  Istria  in  177  B.C.  to  extend  their  scientific  mountain  boundary, 
to  secure  their  sea  communication  with  Aquileia,  and  to  suppress  Illyrian 
piracy  in  the  upper  Adriatic.4  The  appearance  of  the  migrating  Cimbri 

1  Livy  Historia  xxxix.  22.  45. 

2  Mommsen:  op.  cit.,  II,  232-33. 
» Livy  op.  cit.  xxxix.  34. 

<Heitland,  W.  E.:   The  Roman  Republic  (Cambridge,  1909),  II,  141-42. 


38  E.    C.    8EMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN    BOUNDARIES    IN    HISTORY 

at  the  approaches  to  the  eastern  Alps  in  113  B.C.  summoned  the  Roman 
army  to  the  heights  near  Aquileia  in  order  to  protect  the  passes,  but  the 
barbarians  withdrew,  only  to  find  their  way  by  the  upper  Danube  and  the 
Burgundian  Gate  to  the  Rhone  Valley  approach  to  the  Mediterranean.1 

The  policy  of  the  Romans  on  this  northeast  frontier  was  quiescent 
and  defensive.  The  Peartree  Pass  was  the  back  door  of  Italy;  the  Danube 
Valley,  on  which  it  opened,  was  a  back  street  of  the  continent.  Italy  and 
the  Tiber  Valley  fronted  on  the  western  Mediterranean.  This  was  the 
result  of  the  eastward  curve  of  the  Apennines,  which  threw  the  large 
populous  plains  and  valleys  on  the  sunset  side  of  the  peninsula,  and 
centered  their  interests  on  the  western  sea.  Therefore  Rome's  inland 
expansion  first  sought  the  Rhone  Valley  breach  to  the  north,  though  the 
Peartree  Pass  route  had  been  known  to  the  Etruscans,  the  most  ancient 
commercial  expansionists  of  Italy.  Genuine  expansion  beyond  this 
mountain  boundary  began  in  the  time  of  Augustus  with  an  effort  to  police 
this  frontier,  a  common  first  forward  step.  Depredations  of  the  mountain 
tribes  behind  Istria  upon  Tergeste  and  Aquileia  in  35  B.C.  necessitated  the 
conquest  of  all  the  highland  hinterland.2  In  10  B.C.,  the  process  had  to  be 
repeated  in  order  to  teach  the  predatory  tribes  of  the  Julian  Alps  respect 
for  property,  and  especially  to  open  up  the  Peartree  Pass  route  for  merchan- 
dise and  armies  bound  for  the  new  Danubian  provinces.  Ere  long  a  Roman 
road  crossed  the  Mons  Ocra  to  the  colony  of  ^Emona,  where  Laibach  now 
stands.  Siscia  on  the  lower  Save  became  an  important  garrison  town. 

During  the  Voelkerwanderung  the  danger  of  invasion  was  always  im- 
minent. The  towns  of  Venetia  were  the  first  to  glut  the  barbarians'  greed 
for  massacre  and  rapine,  because  the  Danube  avenue,  immemorial  high- 
way for  the  packs  of  human  wolves  from  the  Russian  and  Asiatic  steppes, 
led  straight  to  the  mountain  door  of  the  Venetian  plains.  The  first 
historic  invader  to  cross  the  Peartree  Pass  and  spread  his  tents  upon  the 
banks  of  the  Sontius  was  the  emperor  Theodosius  the  Great.  In  388  A.D. 
and  again  in  394  A.D.  he  advanced  from  Constantinople  up  the  Danube 
to  interfere  in  the  turbulent  affairs  of  decadent  Rome.  Siscia  on  the  lower 
Save,  ^Emona,  and  Aquileia  saw  his  formidable  army,  and  the  battle 
of  the  Frigidus  River  below  the  Peartree  Pass  determined  the  conquest 
of  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  West  by  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  East.8 

The  Visigoths,  who  participated  in  the  campaign  of  Theodosius, 
learned  how  easy  was  the  road  to  Italy  and  how  weak  were  the  defenders. 
Under  their  leader  Alaric  in  402  to  403  they  invaded  Italy.  Taking  the 
route  through  Pannonia  to  the  Julian  Alps,  they  pushed  aside  the  guardians 
of  the  pass  and  descended  rapidly  to  the  siege  of  ill-fated  Aquileia.  Alaric 
overwhelmed  Venetia  and  the  neighboring  Peninsula  of  Istria;  but, 
defeated  by  the  Roman  general  Stilicho  at  Verona  and  Pollentia,  he 

»  Mommsen:  op.  tit.,  Ill,  215-16,  221. 

«  Bury,  J.  B.:   History  of  the  Roman  Empire  (New  York,  1909),  95-98. 

» Hodgkin,  T.:  op.  tit.,  I,  Book  I,  159-69. 


ALARIC,    ATTILA,    AND    THEODORIC   INVADE   ITALY  39 

retired  from  Northern  Italy,  checked  but  not  broken.  The  Romans 
found  him  an  enemy  to  be  conciliated,  for  they  appointed  him  magister 
militae  or  commander  of  the  Roman  armies  throughout  Illyricum,  which 
included  Pannonia  and  Dalmatia.  Thus  they  utilized  his  barbarian 
forces  as  a  border  defense  on  a  weak  and  exposed  frontier,  as  nations  have 
been  wont  to  employ  their  nomadic  or  semi-nomadic  neighbors  in  all 
times  and  all  parts  of  the  earth.1  Alaric  now  held  a  strategic  position. 
He  fixed  his  camp  at  ^Emona,  where  the  Peartree  Pass  road  reached  the 
Save  River.  From  that  base  he  demanded  the  pay  due  himself  and  his 
men  for  their  services,  and  when  he  failed  to  get  it  from  the  disorganized 
government,  he  again  invaded  Italy  in  408.  Once  more  the  Peartree  Pass 
led  him  over  to  the  siege  of  Aquileia  and  the  other  Venetian  towns,2  and 
the  ancient  Etruscan  route  from  the  mouth  of  the  Po  over  the  Apennines 
guided  his  forces  to  Rome.  After  the  siege  and  sack  of  the  capital,  Alaric 
demanded  territory  for  his  Visigoths  in  Venetia,  Dalmatia,  Pannonia,  and 
Noricum,  and  the  office  of  magister  militae  for  himself,  so  that  he  might 
again  command  the  important  line  of  communication  between  Italy  and 
the  Danube.3  His  sudden  death  put  an  end  to  this  demand,  but  his  victori- 
ous followers  moved  westward  out  of  Italy  into  Southern  Gaul,  where 
they  received  an  allotment  of  land. 

The  departure  of  the  Visigoths  from  the  territory  of  Illyricum  had  left  a 
vacant  border.  This  meant  that  the  gate  of  the  Julian  Alps  was  thrown 
open  as  if  in  invitation  to  other  rude  visitants.  East  of  the  previous 
Visigothic  settlements  in  Pannonia  lay  the  great  empire  of  the  Huns,  who 
for  a  century  had  been  pushing  up  the  Danube  Valley.  Checked  by  the 
German  tribes  of  Northern  Gaul  in  his  efforts  to  conquer  that  region,  Attila, 
king  of  the  Huns,  turned  toward  the  weaker  prey  of  Italy.  In  452  he  led 
his  savage  hordes  by  the  undefended  road  of  the  Julian  Alps  straight  to  the 
walls  of  Aquileia.  Having  sacked  and  destroyed  that  city,  he  laid  waste 
the  Venetian  plains,4  whose  refugees  sought  an  asylum  in  the  coastal 
lagoons  and  marshy  islands  to  the  west,  and  there  gave  rise  to  the  terror- 
haunted  beginnings  of  Venice.  Attila  withdrew  to  his  home  beyond  the 
Danube,  but  the  destruction  which  he  wrought  in  the  Po  Valley  had  not 
been  repaired  before  the  Ostrogoths  under  Theodoric,  in  488,  moved 
westward  from  their  capital,  near  the  present  city  of  Belgrade,  up  the 
valleys  of  the  Save  and  Drave  to  the  Julian  Alps.  They  dropped  down  the 
valley  of  the  Frigidus  and  pitched  their  camp  by  the  Isonzo.5  Here,  on 
this  chronic  battlefield,  they  defeated  the  Roman  army  of  the  emperor 
Odovacar. 


1  Sample,  E.  C.:  op.  tit.,  233-35. 

2  Hodgkin,  T.:  op.  cit.,  I,  Book  I,  250-51,  257-58,  280-82,  317. 

'Gibbon:   Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  (London,  1908),  III,  250-57,  275-76, 
287,  312-13. 

«  Hodgkin,  T. :  op.  cit.,  II,  Book  II,  164-70. 
'Ibid.,  Ill,  Book  IV,  202-11. 


40  E.   C.   SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

Eighty  years  elapsed  before  the  teeming  hive  of  the  Danube  plain 
threw  out  another  swarm.  The  next  to  mount  the  Julian  barrier  were  the 
Lombards,  in  568.  In  the  course  of  long  migrations  they  had  drifted  from 
the  mouth  of  the  Elbe  River  southward  to  Pannonia,  and  after  a  temporary 
halt  they  moved  up  the  Save  Valley  through  ^Emona  to  the  Peartree  Pass 
and  Venice.1  This  seems  their  probable  route,  though  according  to  one 
authority  they  reached  the  Venetian  plains  by  the  higher  and  more  difficult 
Predil  Pass  from  the  upper  Drave  Valley  to  the  head  of  the  Isonzo.2  It  is 
quite  possible  that  the  large  and  motley  horde,  incumbered  by  wagons,  their 
families,  flocks,  and  herds,  found  it  necessary  to  use  both  routes  in  order 
to  make  a  sudden  descent  upon  the  Venetian  plains.  From  this  base  they 
ravaged  all  Italy,  and  eventually  gave  their  name  to  the  plains  west  of  the 
Adige  and  north  of  the  Po. 

The  easy  approach  up  the  long  inland  slope  of  the  Julian  Alps,  the 
march  across  the  low  passes,  and  the  swift  descent  down  the  steep  seaward 
slope  of  the  ranges  was  a  historical  event  that  must  easily  repeat  itself. 
This  was  apparent  to  the  new  Lombard  conqueror.  Hence  he  opened  a 
new  chapter  in  the  history  of  Northeastern  Italy.  He  erected  all  the 
Venetian  plain  between  the  Mincio  River,  the  Po,  the  Carnic  Alps  on  the 
north  and  the  Julian  on  the  east,  into  the  border  Duchy  of  Friuli,  with 
Forum  Julii  as  its  capital.  To  its  Duke  he  intrusted  the  hazardous  and 
responsible  task  of  guarding  the  mountain  passes  leading  to  the  Danube. 
The  Duke  stipulated  for  the  noblest,  most  valorous  Lombard  clans  to  form 
his  soldiery  and  the  finest  brood  mares  to  sustain  his  border  cavalry.3 
Thus  was  established  here  a  typical  frontier  principality  of  defense,  after 
the  order  of  the  German  Mark.  A  hundred  years  later  its  chief  was  called 
a  Markgraf;  and  from  this  time  for  five  hundred  years,  so  long  as  the 
human  cauldron  on  the  Danube  seethed  and  boiled  and  overflowed,  there 
was  always  a  Mark  of  fluctuating  boundaries  and  varying  name  that 
rested  upon  the  Julian  Alps. 

This  Lombard  frontier  state  took  its  name  from  its  capital,  Forum 
Julii  (modern  Cividale),  originally  a  market  built  by  Julius  Caesar  in  the 
foothills  of  the  Julian  Alps.  It  was  a  typical  pass  town,  located  on  the 
northeast  margin  of  the  Venetian  plains  where  it  could  command  the 
trade  which  the  Peartree,  Predil,  and  Pontebba  passes  brought  over  from 
Pannonia  and  Noricum.  As  a  base  for  guarding  these  passes,  the  site 
offered  better  facilities  than  Aquileia,  which  never  recovered  from  the 
Hun's  attack  and  retained  only  ecclesiastical  importance.  The  frontiers 
of  the  Duchy  probably  reached  north  to  the  summit  of  the  Carnic  Alps, 
east  to  the  crest  of  the  Julian  Range  and  the  Karst,  south  to  the  Adriatic 
coast,  and  west  to  the  Tagliamento  River.  It  therefore  had  natural  or 
scientific  boundaries  on  its  exposed  sides.  On  the  north  its  Bavarian 

•  Villare,  Pasquale:  Barbarian  Invasions  of  Italy  (London,  1902),  II,  279. 
•Hodgkin,  T.:   op.  cit.,  V,  Book  VI,  158-69. 
» Ibid.,  160-61;  VI,  Book  VII,  38-44. 


THE   JULIAN   ALPS   IN   THE   EIGHTH   AND   NINTH   CENTURIES  41 

neighbors .  were  giving  evidence  of  aggression.  Slovenians,  an  advance 
guard  of  the  great  southern  Slav  migration,  occupied  the  eastern  slopes  of 
the  Julian  Alps.  They  were  a  small  detachment  of  herdsmen  and  farmers, 
who  in  reality  served  as  a  border  outpost  of  defense  against  the  dreaded 
Avars  and  other  intrusive  peoples  of  Mongolian  stock  occupying  the  middle 
Danube  plains. 

The  mere  presence  of  these  nomadic  hordes  in  the  near-by  pasture 
lands  was  a  threat.  In  about  610  the  Avars  swept  across  the  Julian  or 
Carnic  passes  from  the  Save  and  Drave.  They  spread  desolation  among 
the  Lombard  cities  of  the  Duchy  of  Friuli,  much  as  the  Lombards  had  done 
a  few  decades  before  among  the  Roman  cities  of  this  fertile  but  exposed 
province.  After  the  raid  they  retired,  only  to  return  again  in  663,  this 
time  by  the  Peartree  Pass.  In  the  chronic  battlefield  of  the  Frigidus 
Valley  they  defeated  the  Duke  of  Friuli,  ravaged  the  Duchy,  and  again 
withdrew.1  The  Slav  neighbors  on  the  eastern  slopes  of  the  Julian  Alps 
were  probably  impoverished  by  the  Avar  raids;  for  a  few  years  after 
(688-700)  they  resorted  to  systematic  cattle-stealing — the  ancestral 
occupation  of  barbarian  mountaineers — crossed  the  border  and  despoiled 
the  herds  in  the  Friulian  pastures.  Punitive  expeditions  to  stop  these 
depredations  only  served  to  incite  the  warlike  spirit  of  the  Slovenians. 
They  invaded  the  Duchy  by  the  Predil  Pass,  and  defeated  the  Duke's 
forces  in  the  valley  approach  below.2  These  Slovenians,  however,  gradu- 
ally became  assimilated,  through  constant  intercourse,  to  the  higher  civili- 
zation of  the  Duchy  of  Friuli.  Their  territory,  which  received  the  Slav 
name  of  Krajena  or  Krain,  or  "frontier,"3  occupied  the  mountain  country 
between  the  Kulpa  River  on  the  south  and  the  Karawanken  Alps  hemming 
in  the  Save  Valley  on  the  north.  It  was  conquered  by  the  Duke  .of  Bavaria 
in  772,  and  in  788  was  embodied  in  the  Frankish  Empire  by  Charlemagne, 
who  thus  secured  the  strategic  portion  of  the  old  Roman  Pannonia  for 
the  defense  of  his  wide  dominion,  and  erected  it  into  the  Mark  or  March 
of  Friuli. 

During  the  ninth  century,  the  Karling  kings  of  Italy  paid  much  atten- 
tion to  strengthening  this  weak  frontier.  They  extended  the  March  of 
Friuli  west  to  the  Adige  River  and  reinforced  it  by  the  addition  of  the 
March  of  Istria,  thus  giving  it  command  of  the  whole  stretch  of  the  Julian 
Alps  and  Karst  highland  down  to  the  present  Gulf  of  Fiume.  Beyond  the 
crest,  on  the  eastern  slope,  they  had  an  additional  defense  in  the  Krain,  or 
March  of  Carniola,  which  formed  a  frontier  state  of  the  east  Frankish 
Kingdom  or  German  Empire. 

During  the  ninth  century  these  three  Marches  served  as  outposts 
against  the  migrant  Avars.  At  the  end  of  this  period  they  faced  a  new 
enemy  from  the  Danubian  plains.  These  were  the  Magyars  or  Hungarians. 


i  Ibid.,  VI,  Book  VII,  50-54,  286-87. 

» Ibid.,  328-31. 

3  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  art.  "Carniola." 


42  I.  C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

For  a  long  time  they  had  been  moving  along  the  broad  highway  of  migra- 
tion across  Southern  Europe,  pressing  on  the  rear  of  the  Slavs  and  Avars, 
till  they  occupied  all  the  present  territory  of  Hungary  except  the  narrow 
arm  of  land  stretching  through  Croatia  to  the  Adriatic.  The  exposed 
duchies  of  the  German  Empire  threw  out  a  series  of  defensive  vassal 
states,  endowed  with  unusual  privileges  and  unusual  responsibilities,  as 
buffers  and  bulwarks  against  the  enemy.  It  was  a  political  process  of 
thickening  the  hide  of  the  Empire,  so  to  speak.  It  was  a  process  as  natural 
as  that  of  protective  coloring  in  plants  and  animals,  and  it  is  one  that  has 
been  developed  on  exposed  boundaries  the  world  over,  and  the  ages 
through.1 

These  German  border  states  established  to  ward  off  Hungarian  agres- 
sion  were  the  March  of  Moravia,  the  March  of  Austria,  the  March  of 
Carinthia,  the  March  of  Styria,  and  the  March  of  Carniola.  Behind  the 
last  lay  the  Italian  March  of  Friuli,  which  was  also  of  Teutonic  origin. 
The  Markgraf,  or  ruler  of  a  March,  had  the  legal  status  of  the  older  counts, 
but  he  controlled  a  much  larger  territory  and  enjoyed  far  greater  inde- 
pendence, as  his  dangerous  frontier  location  demanded.  He  exercised 
justice,  maintained  a  standing  army,  and  had  the  right  to  call  out  militia 
from  his  population;  but  in  return  for  this  enlarged  authority  he  assumed 
the  grave  responsibility  of  defending  the  border  state.2 

The  proximity  of  Italy  tempted  the  first  inroads  of  the  Hungarians. 
In  899  or  900  they  descended  from  the  mountain  rim  of-Friuli,  "the  most 
harmful  door  left  open  by  nature  to  chastise  the  faults  of  Italy,"  and 
ravaged  as  far  west  as  Pavia.3  They  came  again  in  921,  and  yet  again  in 
924  at  the  request  of  King  Berengar,  who  was  on  friendly  terms  with 
the  Hungarian  chief,  but  was  threatened  by  his  rebellious  Lombard  vassals. 
These  facts  suggest  steady  intercourse,  probably  commercial,  between  the 
Italian  cities  and  the  barbarians,  by  way  of  the  Julian  Alps  and  the  Karst 
passes.  The  desolating  raids  became  almost  annual,  spreading  farther  and 
farther— to  Apulia  in  922,  to  Rome  in  926,  and  to  Capua  in  937.  They 
emerged  upon  the  horizon  of  Italy  somewhere  in  the  Friulian  or  Venetian 
plains,  per  ignotas  vias,  the  chronicler  says,"4  but  they  had  no  connection 
with  the  numerous  Hungarian  incursions  along  the  upper  Danube  Valley 
into  Bavaria,  Swabia,  and  Alsace.  These  facts  seem  to  justify  the  assump- 
tion that  they  came  by  the  old  eastern  passes,  especially  since  the  northern 
passes  had  long  been  guarded  by  the  Bavarians.  When  the  German  king, 
Otto  the  Great,  became  overlord  of  Italy  in  952,  he  transferred  Friuli,  now 
called  the  March  of  Verona,  and  the  March  of  Istria  to  the  Duke  of  Bavaria, 
who  at  the  same  time  ruled  over  Carinthia  and  the  March  of  Carniola. 


1  Semplc,  E.  C.:  op.  cit.,  233-34. 

•Waiti,  O.:  Deutsche  Verfassungsgeachichte  (Kiel,  1876),  VII,  84-94. 
» Thayer,  William  R.:  Short  History  of  Venice  (New  York,  1905),  32. 
4  Marquart,  J.:  Osteurop&ische  und  ostasiatische  Slreifzuge  circa  840-940  (Leipzig,  1903), 
156-58. 


THE   MARCH   OF   CARNIOLA  43 

Thus  he  effectively  closed  the  way  to  Italy  against  the  raids  of  the  Hun- 
garians.1 A  little  later,  in  976,  Carinthia  was  erected  into  a  duchy,  ruling 
over  the  vassal  Marches  of  Friuli,  Istria,  and  Carniola,  and  served,  like 
Bavaria  twenty  years  before,  as  a  sort  of  chief  of  the  border  police. 

These  frontier  provinces  were  transferred  so  often  and  so  arbitrarily 
by  the  politician  emperors  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  payment  for  votes  in  the 
imperial  elections  that  any  geographical  law  in  the  combinations  became 
obscured.  However,  one  or  two  principles  emerge  out  of  the  chaotic 
changes.  The  March  of  Carniola,  because  of  its  location  across  the  sunny 
path  to  Italy,  retained  longest  (till  1254  or  later)  the  March  constitution 
and  privileges  which  at  once  facilitated  and  repaid  the  task  of  defending  the 
frontier.  There  seems  to  have  been  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  this 
border  state  on  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Julian  Alps  was  only  a  part  of  a 
geographical  whole;  therefore  a  recurrent  tendency  is  revealed  to  com- 
bine it  with  Istria  and  Friuli,2  and  thus  to  round  out  the  geographical 
whole  comprised  in  all  the  wide  frontier  zone  of  defense. 

The  growing  Republic  of  Venice  during  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries  gradually  absorbed  most  of  the  coastal  belt  of  the  Istrian  Penin- 
sula. This  brought  a  turning-point  in  the  history  of  Carniola.  The  March 
acquired  nearly  all  the  territory  that  was  left  of  the  old  March  of  Istria, 
and  for  the  first  time  (ca.  1250)  it  had  a  small  littoral  of  its  own  on  the 
Gulf  of  Trieste  and  the  Gulf  of  Fiume.  Moreover,  it  extended  to  the 
lowlands  of  the  Isonzo,  though  not  to  the  river.  In  other  words,  the 
March  of  Carniola  was  astride  of  the  Julian  Alps  and  the  Karst  Plateau, 
with  a  foot  resting  on  the  Adriatic  shore.  This  location  gave  it  an  entirely 
new  significance  and  value.  It  was  no  longer  merely  a  strategic  border 
state,  but  a  border  state  with  a  sea  front,  and  as  such  it  became  an  object 
to  the  inland  states. 

Carniola  was  momentarily  acquired  between  1269  and  1276  by  King 
Ottocar  of  Bohemia  and  Moravia,  who  had  managed  to  get  into  his  own 
hands  all  the  old  belt  of  March  lands  stretching  from  the  Julian  Alps  to 
the  head  of  the  Vistula  and  Oder  rivers  in  the  Moravian  Gates.  Since  he 
had  shortly  before  founded  the  city  of  Koenigsberg  on  the  coast  of  East 
Prussia,3  his  long-strung  possessions  comprised  most  of  the  old  amber  route. 
Ottocar  was  forced  by  the  emperor  Rudolph  of  Hapsburg  to  renounce  his 
recent  acquisitions,  all  of  which  except  Carinthia  and  Carniola  went  to 
found  the  fortunes  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg.  Later  we  find  another 
Bohemian  king  endeavoring  to  secure  for  Bohemia  those  important  terri- 
tories as  a  passway  to  Italy.4  His  plans  were  frustrated  by  the  growing 
power  of  Austria,  which  also  felt  a  vital  need  of  stretching  its  frontier  to 
Italy  and  the  sea,  and  which  in  1335  acquired  Carniola. 


'Huber,  Alfons:   Geschichte  Oesterreichs  (Gotha,  1885),  I,  136. 

•  Ibid.,  218-20. 

»  Freeman,  E.  A.:   Historical  Geography  of  Europe  (London,  1882),  319. 

«  Coxe,  William:   History  of  the  House  of  Austria  (London,  1847),  II,  105-6. 


44  E.    C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN    BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

This  raarchland  of  Carniola,  which  had  originated  on  the  eastern  slope 
of  the  Julian  Alps  as  an  outpost  of  successive  Italian  powers,  now  faced 
about  westward.  It  became  Austria's  exposed  frontier  toward  expanding 
Venice,  and  gave  to  inland  Austria  its  first  narrow  foothold  upon  the  sea. 
While  its  eastern  border  never  changed,  thus  evidencing  the  equilibrium 
between  pressure  and  counter  pressure  of  nations  in  the  Danube  Valley 
during  the  later  Middle  Ages,  on  the  west  Carniola  gradually  acquired  the 
valley  of  the  Isonzo  River  and  the  base  of  the  Istrian  Peninsula.  Thus 
it  comprised  all  the  weak  highland  barrier  which  it  served  to  defend.  Its 
western  frontier  toward  Italy  constantly  fluctuated;  but  throughout  its 
subsequent  history  from  1335  till  1807  it  managed  to  keep  some  strip  of 
seaboard  on  the  Adriatic,  at  Trieste  or  Aquileia  or  on  the  littoral  between, 
besides  a  coastal  pied  de  terre  on  the  Gulf  of  Fiume.  This  it  accomplished 
despite  the  century-long  efforts  of  the  Venetian  Republic  to  exclude 
Austria  from  the  Adriatic,  and  to  get  closer  access  to  the  trade  routes 
leading  over  the  Peartree  and  Pontebba  passes.  By  these  routes  Venice 
fed  her  products  into  backward  Austria.  During  the  Middle  Ages  40,000 
packhorses  came  yearly  from  the  north  down  to  Istria  to  take  back 
Venetian  salt  to  the  Austrian  Empire.1 

When  the  fall  of  Constantinople  let  loose  another  flood  of  barbarians 
into  the  flat  Danube  plains,  Carniola  again  became  the  fighting  marchland. 
Under  the  hot  blast  of  Turkish  attack  Hungary  shriveled  up  like  a  dead 
leaf.  Its  frontier  rolled  back  within  forty  or  fifty  miles  of  the  old  Austrian 
Marches.  Across  this  narrow  buffer  territory  poured  the  Turks  into 
Carniola,  in  1463,  1472,  1473,  1493,  1521,  and  again  in  1559.2  Laibach 
saw  the  Mongol  cavalry  around  its  walls.3  Once  more  the  migrants  of  the 
Danubian  plains  stormed  this  half-open  door  of  Italy.  Once  more  the 
geographical  location  of  Carniola  made  her  the  mountain  warden  of 
Venetian  Italy  until,  in  1683,  the  Turkish  advance  spent  itself  and  gave 
place  to  a  century-long  retreat. 

During  the  Napoleonic  Wars  these  lines  of  easy  communication 
between  Austria  and  Italy  were  the  scenes  of  marching  and  counter- 
marching. Napoleon,  in  1787,  erected  a  new  Illyrian  state  out  of 
Carinthia,  Carniola,  Goerz,  Istria,  the  coast  of  Dalmatia,  and  Croatia, 
to  be  "a  guard  set  before  the  gates  of  Vienna,"  as  he  said.4  With  true 
geographical  insight  he  was  reviving  the  old  March  of  the  Julian  Alps 
and  the  Karst  Plateau  with  somewhat  extended  boundaries. 

In  his  great  Austrian  campaign  of  1797,  from  his  base  at  Treviso, 
north  of  Venice,  Napoleon  met  the  same  military  problem,  determined  by 


1  Thayer,  William  R.:  op.  cil.,  93. 

*  Abbot:  Austria,  Its  Rise  and  FaU  (New  York,  1902),  70,  71,  75,  83,  146,  147.     Huber, 
Alfons:   op.  tit.  (Gotha,  1892),  IV,  13. 

•  Leger,  Louis:  History  of  Austro- Hungary  (London,  1889),  154,  258. 

« Seton-Watson,  R.  W.:   The  South  Slav  Question,  and  the  Hapsburg  Monarchy  (London, 
1911),  26. 


THE   JULIAN   ALPS   IN   MODERN   WARFARE  45 

geographic  conditions,  as  that  now  facing  the  Italian  army  of  invasion  in 
1915.  His  method  of  solution  was  the  same.  He  sent  Jourbert  with 
an  army  by  the  Adige  Valley  into  the  Tyrol,  and  Messena  by  the  Pontebba 
Pass  and  the  Col  di  Tarvis  into  Carinthia,  to  intercept  Austrian  reinforce- 
ments coming  either  from  Germany  or  from  Vienna.  He  himself  attacked 
the  Austrian  army  under  the  archduke  Charles  on  the  Tagliamento  River, 
drove  them  back  across  the  Isonzo,  took  Gradisca,  Monfalcone,  Trieste, 
and  Fiume,  and  made  his  temporary  headquarters  at  Goerz,  an  old  strong- 
hold at  the  outlet  of  the  Wipbach  Valley.  From  there  he  sent  Bernadotte 
to  pursue  the  archduke  Charles,  who  had  retired  from  Goerz  across  the 
Peartree  Pass  upon  Laibach,  and  to  occupy  Carniola.  Napoleon  sent 
another  force  on  the  trail  of  a  second  Austrian  army,  which  was  with- 
drawing up  the  Isonzo  Valley  to  the  Predil  Pass  in  the  hope  of  securing 
the  Col  di  Tarvis  and  the  road  through  Carinthia  to  Vienna.  It  was 
crushed,  however,  by  Massena's  army,  which  was  waiting  for  it  above,  and 
the  pursuing  army,  which  Napoleon  accompanied.  The  commander 
made  his  successive  headquarters  at  Goerz,  Caporetto,  Tarvis,  and 
Klagenfurt  in  Carinthia,  where  he  reunited  the  three  divisions  of  his 
army  for  the  advance  upon  Vienna.1 

In  the  Franco-Austrian  War  of  1809,  Austrian  forces  under  Archduke 
John  invaded  French  Italy  by  the  Pontebba-Col  di  Tarvis  route  and 
defeated  the  opposing  army  at  Sacile,  just  west  of  the  Tagliamento.2  But 
subsequent  reverses  in  Italy  and  discouraging  news  of  the  progress  of  the 
war  in  Austria  forced  the  archduke  John  to  retreat  by  Pontebba  Pass  and 
Col  di  Tarvis  into  Carinthia,  which,  together  with  Carniola,  was  soon  after 
abandoned  to  the  pursuing  French.  Napoleon  in  his  congratulatory 
address  to  the  army  of  Italy  enumerated  the  scenes  of  their  victories, 
names  familiar  to  history,  the  upper  Tagliamento  Valley,  Tarvis,  Fort 
Malborghetto,  Goerz,  the  Save,  and  the  Drave.3 

The  Italian  armies  of  King  Victor  Emanuel  are  compelled  by  geographic 
conditions  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  Napoleon  and  his  generals.  One 
has  advanced  by  the  Adige  Valley  north  into  the  Trentino  or  southern 
Tyrol;  another  has  moved  northeast  across  the  Pontebba  Pass,  to  sever 
the  Trentino's  communication  with  Vienna  through  the  longitudinal 
valley  of  the  Pusterthal  and  to  protect  the  Venetian  plains  from  a  flank 
attack;  a  third  army  has  marched  east  across  the  Isonzo,  taken  the  border 
defenses  at  various  points  along  the  left  bank  of  the  river,  and  now  is 
planning  to  invest  the  strong  fortress  of  Goerz,  while  another  division  has 
occupied  Monfalcone  on  the  advance  to  Trieste.  The  rapidity  of  the 
several  movements,  however,  as  compared  with  those  of  a  century  ago, 
is  much  slower.  It  is  retarded  by  the  vastly  increased  difficulty  of  forcing 


iFournier,  August:  Napoleon  the  First  (tr.  from  the  French,  New  York,  1904),  97-98. 
Hazlitt,  William:  Life  of  Napoleon  (London,  1830),  II,  23-26. 

*  Cambridge  Modern  History  (New  York  and  London,  1906),  IX,  355. 

*Hugo,  A.:  Geschichte  des  Kaisers  Napoleon  (tr.  from  the  French,  Stuttgart,  1834),  I, 
415-17,  429. 


46  E.   C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

mountain  passes  which  are  defended  by  modern  fortresses,  by  masked 
artillery  stations  tunneled  into  mountain  walls  with  only  an  external 
orifice  for  the  cannon's  mouth,  by  long-range  guns  hi  commanding  positions, 
and  by  wire  entanglements.  These  military  equipments  of  defense  have 
restored  much  of  the  pristine  barrier  nature  of  mountain  boundaries 
which  was  theirs  before  the  construction  of  roads  and  the  clearing  of 
forests.  The  present  campaign  in  the  Julian  Alps  may  therefore  prove 
these  highlands  to  be  the  "almost  impassable  barrier"  to  hostile  invasion 
which  they  were  considered  to  be  over  two  thousand  years  ago  by  the 
Roman  Senate.  Such  is  the  power  of  human  inventions  to  modify  the 
effect  of  geographic  conditions. 

The  accessible  nature  of  the  Julian  Alps  and  the  Karst  Plateau. under 
normal  conditions  is  evidenced  also  by  the  distribution  of  population  in 
these  highlands,  and  by  its  ethnic  elements.  Nowhere  else  in  the  whole 
semicircle  of  the  Alps  does  the  density  of  population  exceed  one  hundred 
to  the  square  mile  (forty  to  the  square  kilometer)  across  the  summit  of 
the  mountains,  except  along  the  thickly  settled  littoral  of  the  French  and 
Italian  Riviera,  where  the  Maritime  Alps  sink  down  to  the  Mediterranean. 
Moreover,  there  the  density  decreases  to  half  this  number  a  few  miles  back 
from  the  coast,  whereas  it  is  maintained  across  the  Karst  Plateau  in  a 
broad  belt  from  Goerz  to  Laibach,  extending  south  to  Fiume.1 

Ethnology  also  reveals  the  breachlike  character  of  the  Julian  Alps. 
Throughout  the  Venetian  plains  today,  as  far  west  as  the  Mincio  River,  the 
inhabitants  are  distinguished  by  a  tall  stature,  rare  among  pure  Italians. 
Theirs  is  no  doubt  the  underlying  stock  of  the  ancient  Venetians,  generally 
considered  as  a  lowland  offshoot  of  the  tall  Illyrian  race,  which  is  found 
today  in  Bosnia,  Montenegro,  and  Albania,  and  which  has  given  some 
additional  inches  to  the  later  Slav  immigrants.2  As  the  Julian  Alps  were 
no  barrier  to  the  tall  Illyrians,  neither  were  they  to  the  Slovenians,  the 
subbranch  of  the  Slav  people,  who,  in  the  seventh  century,  pushed  up 
the  Save  Valley  from  the  east,  and  today  cover  the  intervening  territory 
down  to  the  Isonzo.  At  one  point  they  lap  over  the  frontier  into  Italian 
territory,  but  the  old  district  of  Aquileia  and  the  Istrian  littoral  within  the 
Austrian  border  are  still  Italian,8  and  still  hope  to  be  incorporated  in  the 
modern  Kingdom  of  Italy.  All  this  region  up  to  the  summit  of  the  Julian 
Alps  forms  part  of  Italia  irredenda.  Its  recovery  will  give  the  peninsular 
kingdom  a  scientific  frontier  and  deprive  Austria  of  her  present  advantage 
in  offensive  and  defensive  warfare  on  this  border. 

THE  RHONE  VALLEY  BREACH. — Different  from  the  low  Karst  saddle 
and  the  marine  passage  of  the  Bosporus  and  Hellespont  is  the  third  breach 
in  the  mountain  barrier,  formed  by  the  Rhone-Sa6ne-Doubs  groove. 

'Dierckc:  Schul-AUas  (Brunswick,  1909),  89,  128.  Krebe,  Norbert:  L&nderkunde  der 
oeeterreichischen  Alpen,  413. 

'  Ripley,  W.  Z.:  Races  of  Europe  (New  York,  1910),  265-268. 
«  Diercks:  op.  tit.,  "Ethnographical  Map,"  124. 


THE  RHONE  VALLEY  BREACH  47 

Like  the  other  two,  it  connects  with  the  Mediterranean  Basin  a  region  of 
strongly  contrasted  climatic  conditions  and,  during  ancient  and  mediaeval 
times,  of  contrasted  economic  and  industrial  development.  Remote 
from  the  early  eastern  centers  of  urban  life  and  progress  in  the  ^Egean 
and  the  Levantine  basins,  this  Rhone  breach  came  much  later  upon  the 
historical  stage  than  did  the  Bosporus-Hellespont.  It  assumed  an  impor- 
tant role  only  after  the  Roman  Republic  had  transferred  the  big  dramatic 
events  of  Mediterranean  history  to  the  western  basin  by  encircling  that 
basin  with  a  rim  of  Roman  lands.  To  compensate  for  this  tardy  appear- 
ance, it  has  played  a  peculiarly  important  part  hi  the  history,  not  only  of 
the  Mediterranean,  but  of  all  Northwestern  Europe.  It  made  Gaul,  and 
later  F.rance,  one  great  transit  land.  Through  it  Roman  civilization  pene- 
trated into  Gaul,  and  spread  from  the  radiating  passes  at  the  head  of  the 
Rhone-Saone  Valley  west  and  north  over  all  that  province  into  Britain, 
and  finally  eastward  over  the  Rhine  into  Germany.  The  location  of  the 
Alpine  barrier  and  the  Rhone  breach  combined  to  retard  the  dissemination 
of  Roman  culture  into  Germany,  and  at  length  admitted  it  only  in  a 
Gallicized  form.  During  the  decline  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  Rhone 
breach  became  in  turn  the  passway  for  German  tribes  migrating  south. 
The  local  population  there  today  reveals  in  its  fairer  coloring  and  tall 
stature  the  ethnic  infusion  of  the  blonde  giants  of  the  north.  Linked 
geographically  with  the  north,  the  valley  became  linked  ethnically  as  well 
with  the  Teutonic  peoples  who  had  drifted  along  the  shelving  coastal 
plains  of  Germany  and  France. 

Thus  the  Rhone  Valley  breach  performed  the  great  historical  service 
of  uniting  the  maturer  civilization  of  the  warm  Mediterranean  lands 
with  the  growing  civilizations  around  the  colder  thalassic  basins  of  the 
English  Channel,  the  North  Sea,  and  the  Baltic.  These  northern  seas, 
in  turn,  distributed  to  all  their  shores  the  germs  of  culture  brought  up 
from  the  south.  Through  the  instrumentality  of  Flemish,  Dutch,  German, 
Hanseatic,  and  English  traders  they  raised  the  niveau  of  civilization  in 
these  retarded  northern  lands.  The  similar  seed  of  Greek  culture,  planted 
early  and  thickly  on  the  southern  shores  of  Russia,  found  no  such  favorable 
conditions  for  transplanting  to  the  Russian  north.  Many  were  destroyed 
by  the  nomadic  invaders  from  Western  Asia  before  they  had  well  taken 
root  on  the  Scythian  coast.  The  few  that  were  disseminated  northward 
to  the  chill  plains  of  Central  Russia  lost  their  vitality.  Far  from  the 
vivifying  contact  with  the  sea,  impoverished  by  the  lack  of  fresh  accessions, 
they  did  not  breed  true  to  their  type,  but  languished  in  dwarfed  and 
flowerless  form  on  the  monotonous  steppes.  The  ultimate  environment 
of  the  Bosporus  breach  is  found  in  the  Valdai  Hills,  the  Volga  plains,  and  the 
Caspian  desert,  as  that  of  the  Rhone  breach  is  found  in  the  shores  of  the 
northern  seas. 

While  the  Bosporus-Hellespont  breach  dates  back  only  to  Quarternary 
times,  the  Rhone  groove  has  an  old  geological  pedigree.  It  is  not  a  mere 


48  E.    C.    8EMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN    BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

river  valley  of  erosion,  though  erosion  has  carved  out  some  of  its  minor 
physiographic  features;  but  it  traces  back  its  ancestry  to  a  long  marine 
inlet  or  strait  which  in  Eocene  and  Miocene  times  penetrated  northward 
through  a  narrow  belt  of  depression  between  the  young  folded  ranges 
of  the  Alps  and  Jura  on  the  east  and  the  steep  escarpment  of  the  old 
Cevennes  Plateau  on  the  west.  This  sea-arm  filled  the  present  valleys  of 
the  Rhone,  Sa6ne,  and  Doubs,  and  south  of  the  granitic  Vosges  massif 
it  connected  with  another  inland  sea,  which  in  the  early  Tertiary  period 
occupied  the  entire  Vienna  Basin.  The  slow  elevation  of  the  later  Miocene 
closed  the  strait  at  its  northern  end,  but  left  traces  of  its  geological  past 
in  the  broad  gap  between  the  Jura  and  the  southern  face  of  the  Vosges, 
while  the  Rhone-Saone  depression  was  converted  into  a  long,  pouchlike 
inlet  of  the  sea.  Finally,  in  the  Pliocene,  the  Rhone-Saone  emerged  as  it 
is  today,  a  great  river  flowing  through  a  narrow  plain,  fed  by  the  big 
streams  that  drain  the  western  slopes  of  the  Alps  and  Jura,  and  the  short 
torrents  which  at  close  intervals  scar  the  long  front  of  the  Cevennes 
escarpment.1 

The  Rhone  System  opens  a  navigable  highway  straight  north  from  the 
Mediterranean  for  340  miles  (550  kilometers),  half-way  across  the  base  of 
the  Gallo-Iberian  peninsula.  At  its  northern  end  lies  the  chief  hydro- 
graphic  center  of  Western  Europe.  Here  it  connects  with  a  group  of 
navigable  rivers  which  radiate  from  its  low  encircling  watershed,  and  open 
out  natural  routes  of  communication  to  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  the  English 
Channel,  the  North  Sea,  and  even  the  Black  Sea  through  the  near-by 
head  streams  of  the  Danube  River.  Scarcely  a  tidal  wave  of  invasion 
that  swept  the  western  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  failed  to  spread  up  the 
Danube  Valley  also  and  to  reach  in  its  ultimate  wash  that  old  geological 
gap  between  the  Vosges  and  the  Jura. 

This  is  the  famous  Pass  of  Belfort,  known  in  ancient  and  mediaeval 
times  as  "The  Burgundian  Gate,"  a  broad  gap  about  18  miles  wide  (30 
kilometers)  lying  only  1,138  feet  (347  meters)  above  sea-level.  It  unites 
the  Rhone  groove  with  the  long,  fertile  rift-valley  of  the  northward-flowing 
Rhine.  Together  these  formed  the  chief  historical  highway  of  ancient 
and  mediaeval  times  between  the  Mediterranean  and  the  North  Sea. 
Migrant  hordes,  with  their  wagons  and  cattle,  moving  westward  from 
the  upper  Danube  Valley  or  southward  along  the  Rhine  trough  from  the 
chill  Baltic  plains,  converged  upon  this  open  gateway  leading  to  the 
sunny  shores  and  rich  cities  of  the  Roman  Mediterranean.  They  beat 
out  tracks  which  were  later  transformed  into  Roman  roads.  Centuries 
later  a  canal  from  1'Isle,  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Doubs,  connected 
that  river  with  the  111  at  Muelhausen  and  the  Rhine  at  Basel. 

Meantime  a  long  chain  of  cities,  united  by  commercial  interests, 
had  grown  up  along  the  Rhone,  Saone,  Doubs,  Rhine,  and  the  network  of 
channels  in  the  Rhine  Delta  to  expedite  the  trade  between  two  contrasted 

1  Chamberlin  and  Salisbury:   Geology  (New  York,  1906),  III,  277,  319. 


PASSES  OF  EASTERN  FRANCE  49 

regions  of  production.  The  North  Sea  lands,  located  on  the  far  outskirts 
of  the  ancient  civilized  world,  retarded  in  their  economic  and  cultural 
development  by  geographic  remoteness  and  relatively  harsh  climatic  con- 
ditions, commanded  nevertheless  the  abundant  raw  materials  of  new, 
unexploited  countries.  As  growing  civilization  and  trade  pricked  the 
desire  for  luxuries,  these  raw  materials  enabled  them  to  make  a  steady 
demand  for  the  varied  products  of  that  subtropical  and  industrial  Medi- 
terranean world.  Therefore  Holland  and  Flanders,  lying  at  the  outlets 
of  this  Rhine-Rhone  highway,  were  the  first  states  of  Northern  Europe  to 
feel  the  concentrated  effects  of  Mediterranean  culture,  and  to  produce  on 
these  northern  shores  a  replica  of  Mediterranean  Venice,  Pisa,  and  Genoa. 
In  their  splendid  art,  the  rich  fabrics  of  their  looms,  their  brocades  and 
tapestries,  fine  silverwork,  printing,  and  map-making,  we  trace  the  Medi- 
terranean lineage  of  their  models. 

Geographical  companion  pieces  to  the  Burgundian  Gate  are  found 
in  the  series  of  low  passways  which  penetrate  the  hill  country  filling  the 
older  and  broader  geological  gap  between  the  Archean  massif  of  the  Vosges 
and  that  of  the  Cevennes  Plateau.  The  long,  sluggish  Saone,  which  is 
navigable  up  to  this  hill  country  in  the  so-called  Monts  Faucilles,  affords 
easy  access  to  these  watershed  passes.  They,  in  turn,  have  from  the 
earliest  times  offered  a  wide  choice  of  routes  for  intercourse  between  the 
Saone  and  the  diverging  rivers  of  France  which  drain  outward  to  the  North 
Sea  and  the  Atlantic.  Early  migration,  conquest,  and  trade  sought  them 
out  and  used  them  all.  The  easiest  tracks  beaten  out  by  migrant  bar- 
barians traversing  these  uplands  or  the  ones  offering  the  shortest  con- 
nection with  tin-bearing  Britain  were  later  followed  by  Roman  roads. 
Yet  later  most  of  them  were  utilized  for  water  carriage  by  the  system  of 
canals  projected  by  Sully  in  the  sixteenth  century.  All  combined  to 
cement  together  the  various  parts  of  France. 

The  Saone  connects  with  the  Moselle  near  the  great  French  fortress 
of  Epernal  by  a  broad,  open  pass,  1,135  feet  (or  346  meters)  high,  between 
the  Vosges  and  the  Monts  Faucilles.  So  low  is  the  barrier  that  it  has 
never  presented  an  appreciable  obstacle  to  communication  between 
northern  Burgundy  and  southern  Lorraine.  Here  today  one  finds  the 
same  provincial  accent,  the  same  peculiarity  of  geographical  names  ending 
in  -ey,  the  same  type  of  rural  house,  and  the  same  character  of  inhabitants 
on  both  sides  of  the  low  watershed.1  Thirty  miles  to  the  west  an  easy 
pass  route  between  the  Mont  de  Fourches  and  the  Plateau  de  Langres 
connects  the  Saone  with  the  Meuse  Valley;  and  yet  another  crosses  the 
Plateau  of  Langres  at  1,550  feet  (473  meters),  where  canal  and  railroad 
now  link  the  Saone  with  the  Marne.  This  was  the  route  of  the  chief 
Roman  road  leading  northward  to  the  Lower  Rhine.  It  crossed  the 
summit  at  the  ancient  town  of  Andematunnum  (Langres),  but  turning 
thence  across  the  upland  to  the  Moselle  at  Tullum  (Toul),  it  followed 

i  Vidal  de  la  Blache:  Geographic  de  la  France  (Paris,  1903),  234-42. 


50  E.   C.    8EMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN    HISTORY 

the  valley  of  this  river  past  modern  Metz  and  Trier,  and  then  continued 
north  to  the  Rhine  at  Colonia  Agrippina,  the  modern  Cologne. 

The  Roman  road  to  the  Seme,  which  was  probably  the  main  route  of 
the  tin  trade,  was  important  because  of  this  trade  and  also  because  the 
Seine  offered  the  best  navigation  of  all  the  northern  rivers  except  the 
Rhine.  The  road  left  the  Saone  or  Arar  at  the  ^Eduan  town  of  Cabil- 
lonum  (Chalons-sur-Saone),  turned  west  past  modern  Chagny,  and 
mounted  the  plateau  rim  now  known  as  the  C6te  d'Or  to  the  ancient 
^Eduan  fortress  of  Bibracte,  later  to  the  nearby  Roman  town  of  Augusto- 
dunum  (Autun).  Thence  it  turned  northwest,  avoiding  the  granite 
massif  of  the  Morvan  Plateau,  and  followed  the  Yonne  Valley  across  the 
Auxois  plain  down  to  the  southern  elbow  of  the  Seine.  The  modern  route 
from  the  Saone  to  the  Auxois  upland  leaves  the  valley  at  Dijon  and  turns 
up  the  gorge  of  the  Ouche,  which  is  now  traced  by  highway,  the  Bur- 
gundian  Canal,  and  railroad.  But  the  old  road  goes  back  beyond  the 
memory  of  man.  It  was  the  route  taken  by  Caesar  in  58  B.C.,  when  he 
turned  aside  from  his  pursuit  of  the  retreating  Helvetians  to  seek  the 
big  ^Eduan  town  of  Bibracte,  eighteen  miles  away,  where  he  hoped  to  find 
provisions  for  his  soldiers.1  Limestone  buttresses  running  out  from  the 
base  of  Mont  de  Rome-Chateau,  which  overlooks  the  route,  preserve  for 
us  today  ruins  of  bygone  habitations  or  forts,  and  testify  to  the  importance 
of  this  ancient  thoroughfare.2 

Thus  the  upper  Saone  and  Doubs  command  a  semicircle  of  trans- 
montane  connections.  Midway  between  these  headwater  passes  and  the 
Mediterranean  is  the  confluence  of  the  Saone  and  Rhone.  Here  lay  the 
ancient  city  of  Lugdunum  (Lyons),  which  for  centuries  was  the  heart  of 
Roman  Gaul.  It  commanded  not  only  the  whole  length  of  the  Rhone- 
Saone  breach,  but  also  the  east  course  of  the  Rhone,  which  opens  a  narrow 
and  difficult  route  between  the  Jura  and  Savoy  Alps  to  Lake  Geneva  and 
the  lake  plateau  of  Switzerland.  This  is  the  passage  which  the  migrating 
Helvetians  attempted  to  force  in  58  B.C.,  and  which  Caesar  defended.3 
The  swift  and  often  turbulent  current  of  this  mountain  course  of  the  Rhone, 
its  difficult  navigation,  and  its  gorgelike  valley  afforded  a  fairly  good 
barrier  boundary  to  the  young  Roman  provincia,  whose  limits  had  shortly 
before  been  pushed  northward  to  the  Rhone  and  Lake  Geneva. 

This  history  of  the  Rhone  Valley  begins  with  the  founding  of  the  Greek 
colony  of  Massilia  (Marseilles)  in  about  600  B.C.  The  site  of  the  settlement 
was  well  chosen.  Like  many  ports  designed  to  exploit  the  commerce  of 
big  river  systems,  it  was  located,  not  at  the  mouth  of  the  stream,  but 
off  to  one  side,  where  the  constant  deposition  of  deltaic  mud  could  not 
silt  up  its  harbor  and  spring  floods  threaten  it  with  inundation.  Such  a 
location  Massilia  found  where  the  hills  of  Provence  run  out  as  headlands 


»  Caesar  De  Bella  GaUico  i.  23. 
•  Vidal  de  la  Blache:  op.  cit.,  'J -Hi. 
»  Caesar  op.  cit.  i.  2-10. 


THE    RHONE   RIVER   AND   DELTA  51 

into  the  sea  east  of  the  Rhone  mouth.  These  afforded  an  acropolis  for 
the  city  and  a  deep  port,  protected  on  the  north  by  the  long,  bold  promon- 
tory of  the  1'Estagne  from  the  destructive  blasts  of  the  mistral.  Small 
inshore  islets  to  guard  the  approaches  to  the  harbor,  sunny  hillsides  for 
vineyards  and  olive  orchards,  and  the  near-by  river  for  inland  commerce 
added  all  the  other  elements  considered  desirable  for  a  Greek  colony.1 
The  region  yielded  poor  wheat  crops,  however,  so  the  colonists  were  com- 
pelled to  "trust  more  to  the  resources  of  the  sea  than  of  the  land,  and 
avail  themselves,  in  preference,  of  their  excellent  position  for  commerce," 
as  Strabo  tells  us.2 

The  southern  approach  to  the  Rhone  Valley  breach  was  made  either 
by  sea  or  by  land.  The  shallow  waters  of  the  Gulf  of  Lyons,  the  weak 
tides  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  the  heavy  burden  of  silt  transported  by 
the  swift-flowing  Rhone  and  Durance,  all  combined  to  build  up  a  large 
deltaic  plain,  through  which  wind  the  tortuous  courses  of  the  Rhone 
distributaries.  Like  the  outlets  of  the  Nile,  these  varied  in  number  from 
two  to  five  at  different  periods  and  shifted  their  location.3  Access  to  them 
was  difficult.  The  flat,  alluvial  shore  was  often  difficult  to  discern  in 
bad  weather,  as  it  lacked  the  bold  sea-marks  on  which  the  Mediterranean 
sailor  was  wont  to  rely.  The  debouchment  channels  were  constantly 
obstructed  by  the  mud  deposits  at  their  mouths.  As  early  as  101  B.C. 
Caius  Marius,  who  probably  took  his  troops  by  sea  from  some  northern 
Roman  port  for  the  campaign  against  the  Cimbri,  found  it  necessary  to 
construct  a  navigable  channel  through  the  lagoons  and  half-silted  distrib- 
utaries from  the  eastern  outlet  of  the  Rhone  to  a  point  above  the  delta, 
where  the  road  crossed  the  river.4  These  fossae  Marianae  he  gave  to  the 
people  of  Massilia  in  return  for  their  aid  against  the  invaders.  The  city 
made  revenue  out  of  the  canal  by  levying  a  toll  on  all  boats  using  it.5  But 
the  silting  process  in  tune  impaired  its  usefulness,  and  threatened  once 
more  to  block  the  entrance.  Further  obstacles  to  navigation  were  found 
in  the  powerful  current  of  the  Rhone,  and  the  mistral,  called  by  the  ancients 
"the  black  north,"  which  swept  down  the  valley. 

Ancient  traffic  on  the  Rhone  seems  to  have  been  considerable,  despite 
the  difficulties  of  navigation.  The  Massilians  were  not  the  only  ones 
engaged  in  this  river  commerce.  When  Hannibal  in  218  B.C.  crossed  the 
Rhone  on  his  march  from  Spain  to  Italy,  he  was  able  to  buy  numerous 
dugout  canoes  and  boats  from  the  natives,  who  used  them  in  their  exten- 
sive sea  traffic.6  Massilia  was  the  distributing  center  for  the  tin  which 
found  its  way  southward  across  Gaul  from  Britain7  and  probably  also 
from  mines  in  the  Vilaine  Valley  of  Southeastern  Brittany,  where  ancient 
workings  have  been  found.8  Diodorus  Siculus  states  that  the  tin  of 

1  Vidal  de  la  Blache:   op.  cit.,  341,  344,  345.  «  Strabo  iv.  1.  8. 

»  Strabo  iv.  1.5.  •  Polybius  Histories  iii.  42. 

«  Strabo  iv.  1.  8.  »  Strabo  iii.  2.  9. 

•  Heitland,  W.  E.:  op.  cit.,  II,  372.  'Vidal  de  la  Blache:  op.  cit.,  20-21. 


52  E.    C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

Cornwall  was  collected  for  export  on  a  small  inshore  islet  of  the  British 
coast,  a  typical  maritime  market  place.  There  it  was  purchased  by 
merchants  who  took  it  over  to  Gaul,  and  transported  it  on  horses,  a 
thirty  days'  journey  across  the  country,  to  the  mouth  of  the  Rhone.1 
The  Massiliots  set  up  merchantile  factories  in  the  Gallic  towns  to  forward 
the  British  tin  to  the  coast,  together  with  the  raw  products  of  the  interior. 
In  exchange,  they  supplied  the  back  country  with  fish,  salt,  olive  oil,  wine, 
bronze  utensils,  and  pottery,2  some  of  which  undoubtedly  found  their 
way  to  that  indented  Cornwall  peninsula  first  known  to  the  ancients  as 
the  Cassiterides  Islands.3  Through  the  Rhone  Valley  breach  the  cruder 
elements  of  Hellenic  civilization  thus  trickled  into  Northern  Europe,  while 
the  Greek  language,  alphabet,  and  economic  methods  were  disseminated 
among  the  neighboring  Gauls  of  the  long  Massiliot  littoral. 

The  Rhone  Valley  breach  is  approached  also  by  two  land  routes,  one 
from  Italy  and  one  from  Spain,  which  respectively  turn  the  mountain 
barrier  where  the  Maritime  Alps  and  the  eastern  Pyrenees  run  out  into  the 
Mediterranean.  These  narrow  passways  between  mountain  and  sea 
have  always  opened  lines  both  of  trade  and  of  attack.  Hence  Massilia 
fringed  them  with  her  subsidiary  colonies.4  She  lined  the  Gulf  of  Lyons 
from  Emporiae  and  Rhoda  (modern  Rosas)  on  the  Spanish  coast  of  the 
Pyrenees,  around  to  Olbia  (Eoube)  and  the  lies  d'Hyeros  on  the  east; 
farther  on,  Antipolis  or  Antibes,  Nicaea  or  Nice,  and  Portus  Monoeci  or 
Monaco,  strung  along  the  rocky  seaboard  of  the  Maritime  Alps,  opposed 
the  depredations  of  the  mountaineers  and  maintained  the  connections  of 
Massilia  with  its  ally  Rome.8 

These  routes  became  important  also  to  the  Romans  after  their  acquisi- 
tion of  Spain  from  Carthage  in  201  B.C.  Hence  their  first  systematic 
campaigns  against  the  Alpine  tribes  and  their  conquest  of  the  Rhone 
Valley  were  both  inaugurated  by  attacks  on  the  mountaineers  flanking 
this  route,  the  valiant  Salluvii  of  the  Maritime  Alps  and  their  Ligurian 
neighbors  of  the  western  Apennines.  Like  all  highland  tribes,  they  took 
advantage  of  their  strategic  location  to  maintain  a  system  of  pillage  by 
land  and  sea,  to  block  Roman  traffic  with  Massilia  and  Spain,  and  even  to 
obstruct  the  passage  of  Roman  armies.  The  geographical  relief  of  the 
country  fought  for  them.  It  enabled  them  to  maintain  a  guerilla  warfare 
in  intensity  and  duration  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  numerical  strength, 
after  the  manner  of  primitive  mountain  people  the  world  over.  In  125  B.C., 
after  a  conflict  of  eighty  years,  all  that  the  Romans  could  force  from  the 
barbarians  was  a  coastal  strip,  averaging  a  little  over  a  mile  in  width,  for 
purposes  of  a  highway.6  The  ceded  strip  was  transferred  to  the  Massiliots, 

«  Diodorus  Siculus  v.  22. 

»  Curtius,  Ernst:  op.  tit.,  I,  482. 

«Strabo  iii.  5.  11. 

«Grote:   History  of  Greece  (London,  1854),  III,  538. 

•  Strabo  iv.  1.5.  « Strabo  iv.  6.  3. 


ROMAN  CONQUEST  OF  THE  RHONE  VALLEY  53 

who  undertook  to  construct  and  maintain  the  coast  road,  since  it  united 
their  settlements.  Beginning  at  Genoa,  where  it  connected  with  the  Via 
Aurelia,  the  road  ran  west  across  the  roots  of  the  Alps  between  mountain 
and  sea  as  far  as  the  modern  Frejus  (Forum  Julii).  There  it  left  the  coast, 
which  runs  out  southward  into  a  blunt  peninsula,  and  turning  up  the  valley 
of  the  Argeus  River,  continued  westward  along  a  longitudinal  groove 
between  parallel  hill  ranges.  Where  it  emerged  upon  the  alluvial  plain 
of  the  Rhone,  just  north  of  Massilia,  the  Romans  built  the  garrison  town 
of  Aquae  Sextiae  (Aix)  to  guard  the  road.1  This  Massiliot  highway  was 
later  replaced  by  the  Via  Julia  Augusta  in  the  early  days  of  the  Empire. 
Centuries  afterward,  in  1807,  it  was  revived  by  Napoleon  in  the  famous 
Cornice  Road,  which  he  built  to  connect  France  with  his  short-lived 
Kingdom  of  Italy.  Thus  geography  turned  back  to  the  history  of  the 
imperial  Caesars  for  a  page  to  insert  in  the  history  of  the  great  French 
Emperor. 

From  the  military  base  at  Aquae  Sextiae,  which  commanded  land  and 
sea  connection  with  Italy,  began  the  Roman  conquest  of  the  Rhone 
Valley  in  125  B.C.  First  the  Salluvii  between  the  Durance  River  and 
the  sea  were  subdued,  then  their  northern  neighbors,  the  Vocontii,  and 
finally  in  122  B.C.  the  powerful  Celtic  tribes  of  the  Allobroges,  who  inhabited 
the  rich  valley  of  the  Isara  (Isere)  and  the  country  north  to  Lake  Lemanus 
(Geneva).  The  powerful  Averni  of  the  Cevennes  Plateau,  who  had  lent 
assistance  to  Allobroges,  were  forced  to  cede  to  Rome  all  the  short  south- 
eastern slope  of  their  highlands  to  the  Rhone  and  the  Mediterranean  as 
far  west  as  Tolosa  (Toulouse)  on  the  Garonne  River,2  a  territory  com- 
prised hi  the  later  French  province  of  Languedoc.  Thus  practically  all 
the  Rhone  Valley,  north  to  the  Saone  confluence  and  to  Lake  Geneva,  was 
comprised  in  the  Roman  province,  except  the  coastal  strip  tributary  to 
its  ally  Massilia.  The  geographic  reasons  are  clear.  The  valleys  of  the 
Durance  and  Isere  opened  avenues  of  approach  to  the  only  two  practical 
passes  over  the  western  Alps,  the  Mons  Matrona  or  Mont  Genevre  at  an 
altitude  of  6,080  feet  (1,853  meters),  and  the  Little  St.  Bernard  at  7,075 
feet  (2, 157  meters) .  The  latter  was  the  unguarded  door,  hardly  feasible  for 
an  army,  which  probably  admitted  Hannibal's  forces  into  Italy,  though  it 
collected  a  frightful  toll  of  life  from  his  men  and  animals.  Hence  Hanni- 
bal's line  of  march,  by  the  Pyrenean  coast  road,  the  valleys  of  the  Rhone 
and  Isere,  and  the  Little  St.  Bernard  Pass,  determined  with  some  accuracy 
the  limits  of  early  Roman  expansion  into  Gaul. 

On  this  point  the  first  Roman  road-building  across  the  Rhone  is 
instructive.  From  Arelate  (Aries)  at  the  head  of  the  delta,  where  the 
passage  of  the  river  was  easiest  and  where  therefore  the  Massiliot  road 
had  its  terminus,  the  Romans  ran  the  Via  Domitia  westward  around  the 
Gulf  of  Lyons,  through  Narbo  (Narbonne),  capital  of  the  new  province, 

i  Strabo  iv.  1.  5. 

J  Mommsen:  op.  cit.,  Ill,  205-7. 


54  E.    C.   SEMPLE— MEDITERRANEAN    BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

and  thence  southward  over  the  last  spur  of  the  Pyrenees  into  Spain.  Here 
the  massive  form  of  the  Pyrenees,  stripping  off  its  surplus  folds  before 
plunging  into  the  sea,  thrusts  out  an  arm  to  the  Mediterranean.  This 
arm  is  the  Alberes  range,  a  single  bold  ridge  deeply  notched  by  the  Col  du 
Pertus  (951  feet  or  290  meters),  which  opens  a  low  pass  way  between  the 
maritime  plains  of  Roussillon  in  France  and  those  of  Ampurdan  in  Spain.1 
The  sea-front  of  the  Pyrenees  forms  a  series  of  mountain  headlands  towering 
high  above  the  fretting  waves.  It  was  enough  to  daunt  the  Roman  road- 
builders,  for  it  taxed  the  skill  of  the  modern  engineers,  who  by  means  of 
tunnels  and  galleries  put  through  the  coast  railway  here  in  1880.  The 
ancient  gate  of  the  Pyrenees  lay,  therefore,  7  miles  back  from  the  sea. 
Massilia  had  seen  danger  in  this  open  door,  and  therefore  planted  along 
its  southern  approach  several  outpost  colonies  as  bulwarks  against  Iberian 
invasion.  Rome  had  seen  it  too,  when  the  Carthaginians  began  to  estab- 
lish a  new  empire  in  Spain,  and  therefore  in  225  B.C.  exacted  from  the 
Carthaginian  governor  a  pledge  that  he  would  make  the  Ebro  River  the 
northern  limit  of  his  conquests  in  Spain.2  But  when  Hannibal  was  ready 
to  invade  Italy,  he  crossed  the  Pyrenees  by  the  Col  du  Pertus,3  traversed 
Southern  Gaul,  and  was  already  over  the  Rhone  before  the  Roman  army 
under  Publius  Scipio  had  landed  in  Massilia.  From  this  time  on  through 
ancient  and  mediaeval  history  the  Col  du  Pertus  was  a  passway  for  migra- 
tion and  conquest. 

It  is  significant  of  the  purely  Mediterranean  outlook  of  the  Roman 
Republic  that  it  began  its  inland  expansion  up  the  Rhone  Valley  breach 
only  under  the  spur  of  necessity.  The  century-long  rivalry  with  Carthage 
kept  it  facing  seaward,  and  forced  it  out  of  its  peninsular  isolation  into  wide 
maritime  contact  and  dominion.  Its  great  historical  events  were  staged  on 
the  coasts.  The  hinterlands  of  the  three  surrounding  continents  as  yet 
counted  for  nothing.  Conquest  of  the  lower  Rhone  Valley,  the  initial  step 
of  their  inland  expansion,  was  begun  only  after  the  annexation  of  Carthage 
in  146  B.C.  had  made  the  western  Mediterranean  basin  a  Roman  lake,  and 
after  the  Adriatic,  the  Ionian,  and  ^Egean  seas  with  their  bordering  lands 
had  likewise  been  incorporated  in  the  empire  of  the  Republic.  Moreover, 
the  Provincia  Romana  of  Gaul,  located  between  the  western  Alps,  the 
Cevennes  escarpment,  and  the  Pyrenees,  was  Mediterranean  in  its  climate, 
its  natural  products,  and  also  to  some  extent  in  its  civilization,  owing 
to  the  strong  Hellenizing  influences  which  for  nearly  five  centuries  had 
been  emanating  from  Massilia.  The  province  was  organized  and  annexed 
in  121  B.C.  Further  expansion  beyond  the  climatic  limit  defined  by  the 
Rhone  elbow  at  the  Saone  confluence  had  to  wait  till  58  B.C.,  or  over  sixty 
years. 

Meantime  the  provinda  was  having  the  typical  experiences  of  a  border 
district  on  an  exposed  frontier.  While  other  Roman  provinces  like  Sicily 

»  Vidal  de  la  Blache:  op.  cit.,  355-56. 

*  Heitland:  op.  tit.,  II,  223.  *  Polybius  op.  cit.  iii.  9;  xxi.  23,  24. 


INVASION  OF  THE  RHONE  VALLEY  BY  GERMAN  HORDES       55 

and  Spain  suffered  from  local  revolts  against  an  oppressive  government, 
this  one  alone  suffered  from  foreign  incursions.  Therein  it  anticipated 
by  some  five  hundred  years  the  similar  historical  events  of  Pannonia  and 
the  Julian  Alps,  growing  out  of  similar  geographic  conditions.  It  became 
in  effect  a  Marchland,  after  the  order  of  the  later  German  Mark;  and 
it  duplicated  the  history.  First  a  border  district  of  defense,  it  passed 
suddenly  to  a  more  brilliant  role  as  a  base  for  conquest  and  expansion. 
Often  a  geographical  handicap  may  be  converted  into  a  geographical 
opportunity.  It  is  a  matter  of  tipping  the  scales. 

Rome  secured  her  end  of  the  Rhone  Valley  breach  not  a  moment  too 
soon.  Immediately  she  began  to  encounter  here  a  persistent  stream  of 
Germanic  expansion,  which  selected  this  easy  path  to  the  sunny  Mediter- 
ranean lands.  Hither,  in  109  B.C.,  came  the  Cimbri,  who  four  years 
earlier  had  been  ordered  off  from  that  half-open  door  of  the  Julian  Alps. 
The  door  was  wide  open  here,  so  they  defeated  the  Roman  army  some- 
where in  the  Rhone  Valley.  They  returned  in  105  B.C.,  hurled  aside  the 
Roman  army  stationed  at  Arausio  (Orange)  on  the  lower  Rhone  to  obstruct 
their  course,  and  passed  on  victorious  by  the  near-by  Pyrenean  gate  into 
Spam.  They  wandered  in  Spain  and  Gaul  for  two  or  three  years,  but  were 
soon  back,  nosing  like  hungry  dogs  about  the  doors  of  Italy.1  This  time 
(102  B.C.)  the  Cimbri  found  a  way  to  the  Po  Valley  by  the  Brenner  Pass 
(4,470  feet,  1,362  meters)  over  the  Central  Alps;  but  their  allies,  the  Teutons 
and  Ambrones,  came  down  the  Rhone  Valley.  Caius  Marius,  Rome's 
great  general,  four  times  in  succession  elected  consul  in  anticipation  of 
this  danger  on  the  Rhone,  was  sent  to  oppose  them.  He  let  the  bar- 
barians trek  past  his  camp  on  the  lower  Isere,  where  he  had  taken  his  stand 
to  head  them  off  from  the  western  Alpine  passes;  but  near  Aquae  Sextiae 
(Aix),  at  the  entrance  to  the  Massiliot  coast  road  to  Italy,  he  stopped 
their  advance  by  a  crushing  defeat  in  101  B.C. 

The  real  points  of  danger  for  Rome  lay  in  that  semicircle  of  passes 
crossing  the  watershed  of  the  upper  Saone  and  Doubs.  The  country 
between  the  Saone  and  the  Rhine  was  held  by  the  Sequani,  who  thus 
commanded  the  Burgundian  Gate;  that  between  the  Saone  and  the  plateau 
course  of  the  Loire  and  Seine  systems  was  occupied  by  the  JEdui,  who 
thus  controlled  the  western  passes.  Rivalry  existed  between  the  tribes, 
because  each  claimed  exclusive  right  to  the  Saone  and  especially  to  the 
tolls  levied  on  passing  vessels.2  The  Romans,  stretching  their  sphere  of 
influence  to  this  strategic  locality  where  lay  the  keys  to  the  Rhone  Valley 
door,  made  an  alliance  with  the  JEdui,  and  enabled  them  to  exclude  the 
Sequani  from  the  profitable  Saone  commerce.  The  Sequani,  in  turn, 
invited  in  Ariovistus  and  his  German  horde  who  dwelt  just  across  the 
Rhine,  and  in  62  B.C.  by  their  assistance  defeated  the  ^Edui.  The  bars 
of  the  Burgundian  Gate  were  down.  The  Germans  kept  pouring  into 

»  Heitland:  op.  cit.,  II,  363-66,  372-73. 
*  Strabo  iv.  3.  2. 


56  E.    C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN   BOUNDARIES   IN   HISTORY 

Gaul  and  settling  in  the  Sequani  land.  Ariovistus  had  a  German  province 
there  by  58  B.C.,  when  Caesar,  adopting  an  aggressive  policy,  moved  up  the 
Sa6ne  Valley  to  prevent  the  Helvetian  invasion.  This  accomplished,  he 
prepared  to  attack  the  Germans,  who  showed  no  inclination  to  withdraw 
from  their  newly  acquired  territory.  He  advanced  up  the  Doubs  Valley 
and  seized  the  Sequanian  fortified  town  of  Vesontio,  which  occupied  a 
strong  location  within  a  circular  loop  of  the  Doubs  and  which  survives 
today  as  the  great  fortress  of  Besancon.  From  this  town  as  a  military 
base  he  attacked  the  Germans  near  the  Rhine  and  drove  them  across  the 
river  out  of  Gaul.  That  autumn  the  army  of  Caesar  went  into  winter 
quarters  in  the  Sequanian  territory.1  Rome  held  the  Burgundian  Gate. 

Thus  began  the  conquest  of  Gaul.  The  significance  of  the  movement 
for  the  Romans  lay  in  the  complete  control  of  the  Rhone  Valley  breach 
and  its  inland  approaches;  in  the  protrusion  of  the  frontier  far  beyond  the 
danger  line  found  in  that  semicircle  of  watershed  passes;  and  in  the  inland 
extension  of  Roman  trade  routes.  For  the  world  at  large  it  meant  the 
advance  of  historical  events  beyond  the  narrow  rim  of  the  Mediterranean 
Basin  to  the  contrasted  Atlantic  lands  of  Europe. 

The  conquests  of  Caesar  checked  for  a  time  the  streams  of  barbarian 
invasion.  The  decline  of  the  Empire  saw  them  surging  on  again.  The 
Germans  repeated  the  history  of  Ariovistus  and  his  hordes.  They  settled 
first  in  the  elbow  of  the  Rhine,  like  the  Allemani  and  the  Burgundi,  then 
moved  across  the  river  and  through  the  Burgundian  Gate  into  the  Doubs 
and  Saone  valleys.  Others  followed  the  course  of  the  Cimbri,  moved 
westward  by  the  Belgian  plain  to  the  Meuse  and  then  up  its  valley  to  the 
Saone  passes.  In  the  fifth  and  early  sixth  century  the  Burgundians  occu- 
pied all  the  old  Sequanian  and  much  of  the  ^Eduan  territory;  in  fact  all 
the  basin  of  the  Saone  and  middle  Rhone.  There,  strong  in  their  strategic 
location,  their  mountain  barrier,  and  their  geographic  unity,  they  main- 
tained themselves  as  an  independent  kingdom  for  nearly  a  hundred  years, 
till  in  534  they  were  conquered  by  the  Franks.2 

The  expansion  of  the  Frankish  tribes  from  their  base  in  the  northern 
plains  of  Gaul  is  instructive  from  the  geographical  standpoint.  They 
swung  around  to  the  west  of  the  Cevennes  Plateau  and  in  511,  by  the  con- 
quest of  nearly  all  Aquitaine  from  the  West  Goths,  they  pushed  their 
boundary  up  the  Garonne  Valley  to  the  Gap  of  Carcasonne;  sweeping 
also  down  the  Rhone  Valley,  they  forced  their  frontier  toward  the  Medi- 
terranean as  far  as  Orange,  where  the  Cimbri  had  defeated  the  Romans. 
But  they  were  still  shut  out  from  the  Mediterranean.  That  old  coastal 
belt  between  the  Maritime  Alps  and  the  Pyrenees,  which  expanding  Rome 
had  first  detached  from  Celtic  Gaul,  was  still  detached  from  this  young 
Frankish  Gaul.  Provence,  that  earliest  provincia  romana  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean seaboard  and  the  Durance  Valley,  formed  an  arm  of  that  East 
Gothic  kingdom  of  Theodoric.  The  rest  of  the  coastal  strip  between 

»  Caesar  op.  tit.  i.  31-54.  «  Hodgkin,  T.:   op.  tit.,  Ill,  357-58,  592. 


THE  SARACENS  IN  THE  KRONE  VALLEY  57 

the  Rhone  Delta  and  the  Pyrenees,  called  Septimania  or  Gothia,  formed 
a  similar  arm,  which  the  Spanish  kingdom  of  the  West  Goths  thrust  out 
to  grasp  hands  as  it  were  across  the  turbid  current  of  the  Rhone  with  its 
brother  nation  and  overlord  of  the  Italian  peninsula.  Thus  these  twin 
Gothic  kingdoms  were  geographically  the  exact  successors  of  Rome  in 
100  B.C.  when  it  had  united  Italy  and  Spain.1  The  coastal  strip  of  Mediter- 
ranean Gaul  was  the  link  between. 

The  link  was  too  frail  to  resist  the  seaward  expansion  of  the  Frankish 
kingdom.  It  gave  way  in  Provence,  which  was  annexed  to  the  dominion 
of  Clovis  in  536.  Those  interlacing  headstreams  along  the  granitic  high- 
lands of  the  Vosges  and  Cevennes,  knitting  together  the  river  valleys  of 
France,  rounded  out  to  its  logical  limits  the  territory  of  that  first  great 
imperial  expansionist  of  the  North  Germans.  Septimania,  held  by  the 
eastern  Pyrenean  passes,  remained  part  of  the  Spanish  kingdom  of  the 
West  Goths  till  719,  when  it  became  part  of  the  Spanish  caliphate  of  the 
Saracens,  and  so  continued  with  a  few  intermissions  till  797.  Again  the 
Pyrenean  Gap  and  the  Rhone  Valley  were  historically  linked.  During 
the  Saracen  conquest  of  Spain,  Christian  refugees  fled  across  the  eastern 
Pyrenees  to  the  protection  of  this  transmontane  province  of  Septimania, 
and  spread  their  Catalan  Spanish  speech  as  far  as  the  Courbieres  Range, 
on  whose  last  low  shelf  stands  Narbonne  above  the  alluvial  flats  of  the 
Aude  River.  Their  respite  was  short;  their  asylum  wall  too  low.  In  a 
few  years  reconnoitering  bands  of  Saracens  sought  out  the  eastern  passes 
of  the  Pyrenees.  Then  came  a  great  Saracen  army  in  719,  and  captured 
and  fortified  Narbonne  as  a  base  for  future  campaigns;  Narbonne,  which 
the  Romans  had  built  to  command  the  Gap  of  Carcasonne  and  the  coast 
road  to  the  Rhone.2  Defeated  in  their  attempts  to  conquer  Aquitaine,  the 
Saracens  turned  toward  the  Rhone.  They  took  Avignon  in  730.  For  a 
few  years  Nimes  and  Aries  were  in  their  power;  but  even  in  that  short 
period  they  injected  new  life  into  the  Rhone  Valley  commerce,  kept  their 
merchantmen  hovering  about  the  coast,  and  made  their  profit  as  the  sea 
traders  of  Arabian  Yemen  have  known  how  to  do  ever  since;  in  rafts  and 
dugouts  they  crossed  the  Strait  of  Bab-el-Mandeb  to  the  market  land  of 
Punt  and  brought  back  Indian  pearls  and  jewels  to  deck  their  Queen  of 
Sheba.  The  outpoured  flood  of  conquest  which  spread  from  Arabia  to  the 
Pyrenees  had  now  spent  itself.  The  occupation  of  Southern  Gaul  was  the 
last  weak  lapping  of  the  tide  before  the  ebb.  Narbonne  was  captured  from 
the  Saracens  in  752  by  Pepin  le  Bref ;  but  it  had  to  be  retaken  in  797,  and 
finally  was  embodied  in  the  domain  of  Charlemagne.  At  the  same  time 
(777-801),  the  Emperor  advanced  his  frontier  over  the  southern  slope 
of  the  Pyrenees  and  occupied  the  Spanish  March  as  an  outpost  against  the 
Saracens.3  Thus  he  restored  the  old  union  of  Northeastern  Spain  with 


i  Freeman,  E.  A.:   op.  tit.,  121-23. 

»  Coppee,  H.:  History  of  the  Moors  in  Spain  (Boston,  1881),  I,  418-22;   II,  17. 

»  Freeman,  E.  A.:  op.  cit.,  125. 


58  E.    C.    SEMPLE — MEDITERRANEAN    BOUNDARIES   IN    HISTORY 

the  coastal  province  Septimania,  and  repeated  the  history  of  Massiliot 
Gaul. 

The  threefold  division  of  the  Carolingian  Empire  by  the  treaty  of 
Verdun  (843)  is  explicable  only  in  the  light  of  the  Rhone  Valley  breach. 
This  geographical  fact  is  the  key  to  what  otherwise  appears  to  be  an  arbi- 
trary and  erratic  allotment  of  the  territory  to  the  three  heirs.  The  division 
left  to  Charles  the  major  part  of  what  we  are  wont  to  call  France,  or  the 
kingdom  of  the  West  Franks;  to  Louis,  the  kingdom  of  the  East  Franks, 
which  might  be  called  the  big  nucleus  of  modern  Germany;  to  Lothair  it 
gave  Italy  and  "a  long  narrow  strip  of  territory  between  the  dominions  of 
his  Eastern  and  Western  brothers,"  Freeman  states,  and  then  adds  in 
explanation:  "Between  these  two  states  the  policy  of  the  ninth  century 
instinctively  put  a  barrier."1 

Geography  admits  no  place  for  instinct  in  its  interpretation  of  history. 
It  looks  for  concrete  and  tangible  causes.  In  this  particular  case  it 
observes  that  the  problematical  strip  of  Lothair's  territory  comprised 
the  whole  Rhone-Saone-Doubs  Valley,  the  Burgundian  Gate  with  the 
elbow  of  the  Rhine,  the  two  northern  passes  of  the  hill  country  of  the 
Monts  Faucilles  and  Mont  des  Fourches  to  the  Moselle  and  the  Meuse, 
all  the  country  drained  by  these  two  rivers,  and  the  valley  of  the  Rhine 
below  the  confluence  of  the  Moselle  at  Coblenz.  In  other  words,  Lothair, 
to  compensate  himself  for  the  small  territory  of  Northern  and  Central 
Italy,  demanded  the  whole  stretch  of  that  natural  transit  belt  which 
crossed  Europe  from  Marseilles  northward  to  Cologne,  Aix,  and  the 
mouths  of  the  Rhine,  the  Meuse,  and  the  Scheldt.  This  he  held  in  its 
entirety  except  at  two  points.  The  West  Prankish  kingdom  retained 
the  Langres  Pass,  where  the  original  Roman  road  had  crossed  the  water- 
shed; and  it  also  thrust  its  frontier  across  the  Saone  at  Chalon-sur-Saone 
in  order  to  keep  the  important  valley  terminus  of  the  ancient  JSduan  and 
Roman  highway  down  from  Autun.  But  Lothair's  strip,  in  compensation, 
bent  sharply  west  from  Lyons  far  up  on  the  Cevennes  Plateau,  in  order 
to  include  the  city  of  Roanne  (Rodumna)  on  the  Loire,  the  terminus  of 
the  old  Roman  road  which  ran  west  to  Bordeaux  on  the  Garonne  estuary. 
Though  all  these  ancient  Roman  highways  had  undoubtedly  degenerated 
into  mere  tracks,  they  still  sufficed  to  direct  the  commerce  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

A  traffic  zone  hardly  furnishes  a  sound  basis  for  a  political  territory, 
though  it  may  yield  a  generous  revenue.  This  transit  strip  constituting  the 
continental  part  of  Lothair's  kingdom  proved  its  artificial  character  by  its 
rapid  dissolu  tion.2  The  northern  half,  comprising  the  valleys  of  the  Meuse , 
the  Moselle,  and  the  Rhine,  was  absorbed  by  the  East  Frankish  kingdom. 
Out  of  the  remaining  ruins  emerged  once  more,  in  887,  the  independent 
kingdom  of  Burgundy,  a  geographical  unit  with  natural  boundaries  of 
mountain  and  sea  to  protect  its  frontiers;  with  the  Rhone-Saone-Doubs 

>  Freeman,  E.  A.:  op.  cit.,  140. 

•  LaviMe:   Hialoire  de  France  (Paris,  1901),  II,  Part  II,  4. 


MARSEILLES,    ENTREPOT   OF   THE   RHONE   VALLEY  59 

System  penetrating  every  part  of  its  area,  like  a  great  artery,  to  unify  its 
national  life;  with  the  control  of  the  Burgundian  Gate,  the  northern  passes, 
and  the  Alpine  coast  road  to  Italy,  to  give  it  weight  in  the  political  councils 
of  Western  Europe.  Its  strategic  location  tended  to  compensate  for  its 
lack  of  area.  It  stood  in  the  center  of  the  balance  and  could  throw  its 
weight  on  one  side  or  the  other.  Through  this  power  it  was  able  to  main- 
tain its  independence  till  1032,  when  it  became  a  fief  of  the  German  Empire. 
Then  the  whole  stretch  of  the  Rhone-Rhine  groove  was  politically  united. 
The  influence  of  the  through  commerce  is  indicated  by  the  rise  here  of 
numerous  free  cities,  Besangon,  Lyons,  Orange,  Aries,  and  Marseilles, 
which  controlled  all  the  foci  of  trade  till  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
maintained  the  importance  of  this  vassal  state  of  Burgundy.  Until  1365 
ths  mediaeval  German  kaiser  went  to  Aries  to  be  crowned  king  of  Burgundy 
as  he  went  to  Rome  to  be  crowned  emperor  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

The  later  history  of  Burgundy  recites  the  gradual  absorption  of  this 
"middle  kingdom,"  as  the  old  chronicles  called  it,  by  the  modern  king- 
dom of  France.  Early  in  the  fourteenth  century  its  voracious  western 
neighbor  began  to  gnaw  at  its  western  frontier,  taking  a  bite  here  and 
there,  till  by  1378  it  had  swallowed  up  the  southern  Rhone  Valley  from  the 
Mediterranean  to  Lyons.  The  northern  part  of  Burgundy,  which  was 
more  closely  linked  with  Germany  through  the  Burgundian  Gate  and  the 
Lorraine  passes,  was  able  longer  to  resist  French  expansion.  Nevertheless, 
in  another  hundred  years,  by  1477,  it  had  shrunk  to  the  free  county  of 
Burgundy  or  the  Franche  Comte,  a  small  territory  comprising  the  valleys 
of  the  upper  Saone  and  Doubs,  which  passed  to  France  in  the  conquest 
of  Louis  XIV.1 

The  Rhone  Valley  breach  opened  a  path  of  conquest  for  the  military 
Franks  from  the  north  to  the  coast  provinces  of  Languedoc  and  Provence, 
just  as  later  it  facilitated  the  expansion  of  the  French  kingdom  to  the 
Mediterranean  coast  and  enabled  it  to  round  out  its  territory  to  its  natural 
frontier.  The  breach  has  given  to  this  stretch  of  coast  a  unique  impor- 
tance as  the  only  littoral  in  the  western  Mediterranean  that  commands 
easy  connection  with  a  continental  hinterland,  and  as  the  southern  outlet 
of  a  great  plexus  of  northern  land  routes. 

Marseilles,  which  has  long  overshadowed  its  mediaeval  rival  Aries,  is 
the  only  seaport  of  the  Rhone  Valley.  It  has  therefore  concentrated  upon 
itself  all  the  exports  of  Northwestern  Europe  which  seek  the  market  of 
Africa,  the  Levant,  Eastern  Asia,  and  Australia;  it  gathers  in  return  the 
wheat  of  Russia,  the  oil  seeds  of  India  and  Africa,  the  wines  and  dried 
fruits  of  the  Mediterranean,  the  teas  and  spices  of  the  Far  East.2  The 
variety  of  products  from  distant  sources  which  pass  through  the  harbor 
of  Marseilles  is  symbolic  of  the  peoples,  tongues,  and  civilizations  that 
have  moved  along  the  Rhone  Valley  thoroughfare  since  the  dawn  of 
history. 

i  Freeman,  E.  A.:   op.  cit.,  141,  148,  150,  194;  map  plates,  XVIII-XXV. 

*  Chisholm,  George  G.:   Compendium  of  the  Geography  of  Europe  (London,  1899),  I,  429. 


